Time for wake-up call for girls hoops
Bolingbrook's Cabriana Capers leads a victory dance after beating Zion-Benton to claim the 4A title.
(Matt Marton/Sun-Times Media)
(Matt Marton/Sun-Times Media)
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White TextNORMAL — It didn’t seem like many noticed, but Bolingbrook won the girls Class 4A state title Saturday night at Redbird Arena, its third championship in a row.
Earlier in the day, Montini won its second consecutive Class 3A title. A week earlier, Quincy Notre Dame beat Bloomington Central Catholic for the Class 2A title. In 2010, the same teams met in the title game with Bloomington Central Catholic winning.
To say that fan interest is down is an understatement. The same schools, and schools with very little community, winning the big trophies.
Attendance is down, and after awards are given out at halftime of the title games to the third and fourth-place finishers, half of the people in stands are on their way home. And television reaches a million or more fewer homes than it did a year ago.Figures provided by Matt Troha of the Illinois High School Association show that paid attendance for the Montini-Hillcrest Class 3A championship was 1,258, and it was 1,696 for the Bolingbrook-Zion-Benton Class 4A title game Redbird Arena, which holds 10,200.
The Illinois Basketball Coaches Association has had a hospitality room under the stands on the north end of Redbird Arena for years. You could count the number of coaches in there on one hand at many times during the weekend.
“They used to limit coaches to three meatballs to make sure they lasted,” Maine West coach Derril Kipp said. “There used to be more than 100 coaches, Now there aren’t 10. No one bothers to count meatballs anymore.”
One problem seems to be that having two Final Fours on a tournament weekend, instead of a one-class Elite Eight limits the number of fans interested. And seven of the eight teams playing over the weekend were from the Chicago area, all except Springfield.
“The Final Four eliminates some of the suspense,” Galesburg girls coach Evan Massey said. “In the Elite Eight you had more to play for. Now. there are only a couple of possibilities of what can happen. It used to be like the state finals was a coaches’ convention, but now, while some come down here for the IBCA all-state meeting, they don’t stay, and they don’t bring kids.
“High school girls basketball has changed a lot in the last 20 years. The most dramatic thing has been the movement of players. Look at all the transfers into a school like Bolingbrook. There has been much more movement of kids and that has made high school sports less competitive. And now, it is much more likely that no one from Downstate will get to state in the largest class.”
How many of the Bolingbrook players, except for Chicago Sun-Times Player of the Year Ariel Massengale, grew up in Bolingbrook? Every year there are transfers and word is that more may be on the way. No one is saying that anything is illegal, but transfers are ruining high school basketball.
For year, many in the area have said that moving the largest class, or classes, close to Chicago would boost attendance.
When Bolingbrook met Montini at Willowbrook in mid January at the McDonald’s Girls Classic at Willowbrook, the gym was packed and there were more fans than attended the Class 3A or Class 4A finals, where the total for eight games was 6,862 paid. For Classes 1A and 2A, which had no team from closer to Chicago than Kankakee, the two-day total was 11,894.
“There is no suspense about who is going to win,” Kipp said. “[State runnerups] Zion-Benton and Hillcrest didn’t have a chance.”
Montini won the Class 3A title by 22 points and Bolingbrook won Class 4A by 29 after leading by as many as 34.
Four classes were supposed to open things up and give teams more opportunities, and the Illinois High School Association is awarding twice as many trophies. This was the seventh consecutive trip to the Final Four for Bolingbrook. It was the sixth time in seven years that Young made it to the Final Four. And Montini was playing in its third Final Four in the past four seasons.
Illinois High School Association administrator Beth Sauser met with coaches between sessions in Friday and there were only five or six coaches that showed up.
“We will listen to any ideas,” said Sauser, who played in state finals for St. Edward in the 1980s. “The attendance for [Classes] 1A and 2A was up.”
One thing that has been suggested is that the multiplier for schools without geographic boundaries be scrapped and that those schools automatically be bumped up a class or two.
As Driscoll showed with seven consecutive state football titles, when you multiply a small (enrollment) number is its still going to be small.
Montini has won six state titles, two each in football, dual-team wrestling and girls basketball in less than a year-and-a-half. The Class 2A girls finalists were both non-boundary schools. While you’re at it, how many football titles have Mount Carmel, Providence and Joliet Catholic won since the multiplier came in? Those three schools have combined to win 32 state titles, but just one since 2004.
Another suggestion for years has been to eliminate the third-place games. While some coaches still like it, you could start the late title games much earlier and that would allow fans a better chance to get home instead of leaving at 11 at night.
“I love having the third-place game,” Maine South coach Mark Smith said before his team knocked off Young in the Class 4A third-place game. “We can get everyone on the floor and it is special to our kids to play in a game situation.”
“It was pretty hard to come back after a loss [to Bolingbrook in overtime in Friday night’s late semifinal],” Young’s DePaul-bound guard Chanise Jenkins said. “It’s not an excuse. We just didn’t follow though.”
“It was really hard to come back after losing [Friday],” Young’s Michigan State-bound Kiana Johnson said. “But it was still a game we should have won and didn’t”
Marshall coach Dorothy Gaters has been for moving the large school tournaments to the Chicago area.
“Our kids worked hard and I believe that they were the best representative from our sectional and supersectional,” Gaters said. “But it is kind of a downer to come back once you lose a game down here.”
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