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This week there seemed to be some consternation about Warsaw boys’ basketball season ticket offering changes resulting in premature consternation.
A Letter To The Editor section in an online news provider published a concerned, very long-time Warsaw Tiger boys’ basketball fan strongly believing the season ticket sales offerings would cease this coming season.
Whether the genesis of this topic’s discussion came from a café, or social media posts speculating the worst the first thing a person should do when they hear something alarming like this is contact the sole source of truth: the athletic department.
Warsaw’s athletic department was already moving through a process to address these things:
These circumstances have made the Tiger Den crowd, even when there are 2,500 on hand (a tad greater than 50% capacity attendance in our big facility), look kind of… splotchy. The noise a crowd of 2,500 fans should make is watered down in the Tiger Den.
The athletic department made it clear that season tickets will be available for sale this year, but the lower-level seats not held for season ticket purchases will now be available to the general public. With this said, I’m not going to explain the process for securing your tickets step by step. Please visit www.warsawtigers.com (the very sharp and informative athletic department website) for this information.
What I shall use my copy space for this morning is why I welcome the athletic department’s approach to season ticket sales, and general admission seating hereafter.
I strongly believe a Tiger Den with a full low-level seating available to general admission (season ticket holders will have distinct locations marked) will blend the spirited crowd who shows up at every game with spirited fans who cannot make every home game, but are great fans nonetheless, into an atmosphere advantageous for firing up our Tigers, and letting the opposing fans know this is our house.
Ardent fans who recently attended games redeployed to Lakeview Middle School’s gymnasium (the OG Tiger Den per se) cannot deny how electric the crowd was with a cozier seating area.
Approximately 3,200 people were assembled tightly, and the experience waxed nostalgia for many.
Those of you attending basketball games in Columbia City or Northridge in the most recent completed season were also witness to venues with a bowl-like layout, a blend of lower level general admission and season ticket seating, and the resulting energy and noise levels experienced for two crucial girls’ basketball games this last season.
I am hoping season ticket holders from the past will be encouraged in the present and future by the availability of their reserved lower-level seating enhanced by the energy of general admission ticket holders now bringing their energy to the lower level, and making the place look tight.
In the current set-up, I sit on the east base line against the top row wall, and the baseline seating is barely half full. The optics are worse when news coverage shows highlights where the baseline is visible and a viewer would be under the impression the Tiger Den was sparsely populated.
When I was a kid, and Cleveland Municipal Stadium (capacity for baseball @ 85,000) had a major league baseball crowd as large as its current field’s total capacity (spit-balling… roughly 45,000 seats) it still looked and felt cavernous.
Worse yet, there would be bare spots in the more expensive lower-level seats and bigger clusters of fans in more reasonably priced sections at higher levels.
These are the optics from my childhood resurfacing in my brain today by the splotchiness of open lower-level seating in venues like the Tiger Den, Michigan City’s gym, North Side Gymnasium, and other mega-temples of Hoosier Hysteria.
The Warsaw athletic department’s solution to assuring availability of reserved seating and offering general admission seating among the lower level’s unreserved seats is the right thing to do.
So, come on down.
You’ve seen what my section looks like in person and from news highlights. Don’t worry. I don’t bite, and I’ve had all my shots, too.
