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As some winter sports (girls’ basketball, girls’ and boys’ wrestling, boys’ and girls’ swimming and diving) have reached or already completed their state finals, folks are celebrating achievements and also evaluating how well next year’s team and individual sports will fare.
I like the yearbooks published by football and basketball pundits because they’re good refreshers of the programs who had success, who are showing some progress, or have some rebuilding to do in the offseason.
The publications list the completed seasons’ statistical leaders, and the returnees - even those whose stats indicate they saw a little less action.
It is important to take note of how many touchdowns, tackles, shots made, etc. need to be replaced due to graduation. My conventional wisdom, however, leans heavier toward who is returning, and if their stats are light, is there any indication of how productive they were in relative terms, i.e., limited minutes.
A new wrinkle in evaluating how teams will fare in the next scholastic sports year is the contributions transfer student athletes bring to a program.
It might be apparent who the top teams in each sport are based on returning talent, but high school sports and college sports prognostications now require the completion of student athletes’ transferring into your school’s teams.
I don’t believe, even with this wrinkle, high school sports fans will be – as Jerry Seinfeld put it – practically rooting for their teams’ laundry instead of the athletes donning it each game day. It still, nonetheless, requires caution before predicting order of finish in scholastic sports.
Seinfeld’s context at the time he made his comment, was free agency’s effect on professional football.
I am very curious to see the transfer effect among area teams, and to hear these transfers discuss the ups and downs if their contributions warrant an interview.
My mind shifts to how sports – like real estate – area very much about three things:
location, location, location.
This area has sports play-by-play broadcasters and weekly scholastic sports talk shows with a big market feel in a small market area.
Channel hop on any given Friday or Saturday night among the broadcasts and telecasts in the Times-Union readership area, and you can easily see we have a nice group of “pros” in the listening and reading area.
There is a strong enough concentration of talent here, I found my niche in PA announcing instead of broadcasting, deciding the energy I wanted to put into a public address mic was the most worthwhile.
Location… also dictates the opportunities to work sporting events at varying levels.
If one aspires to announce at professional levels while residing here, it’s at least a five-hour round trip plus the additional prep, meetings, and early dry runs if you’re going to cover major league events at the major college and professional level.
On the radio and at the scorer’s table, Northern Indiana has some talent capable of rising to major collegiate and professional levels, but the price you pay is comprised of wear and tear on your vehicle, and less time to sleep following an evening’s event returning from pro and college sports towns.
There are two NAIA collegiate athletic conference many schools in Northern Indiana belong to whose attendance is disparate even if the quality of play is closely comparable.
Grace College, whose men’s teams are consistently top notch these days, plays in the Crossroads League comprised almost entirely of faith-based schools in smaller towns with athletes mostly developed in this region with some outliers.
The Crossroads League consistently fills more bottoms in their seats compared to a league I’m involved with the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference (CCAC).
The CCAC has somewhat of an ironic location, location, location issue.
Its collective fan base is in more densely populated areas in the Chicagoland area compared to Crossroads League campus towns such as Marian, Warsaw/Winona Lake, Huntington, Spring Arbor, and Upland (to name a few).
Fan bases among CCAC campuses can see semi-pro and pro sports events in Chicago, Milwaukee, or even Notre Dame in the Michiana area.
Crowds are still energetic, but total much less than 1,000 fans – sometimes even less than 200 fans on some campuses – but these teams and their fans still bring the energy.
Warsaw and Winona Lake are blessed with a top-notch men’s basketball program in an impressive facility, and fan attendance at Grace events is impressive relative to our community size.
I leave you this morning hoping March weather forgets the current lion state and stays like the lamb closing out February.
