Some years ago now, many area conferences decided to schedule girls’ basketball games on Friday night, which previously had been reserved only for boys’ contests.
In the opinion of this reporter, that is a good thing.
There are a couple of Richland County area teams that enjoy this privilege, Shelby and Ontario, who are both members of the Northern Ohio League. The “NOL” has set aside three Fridays during the 13 week regular season schedule for the girls to play under the Friday night lights.
To understand the significance of Friday night, you must first understand high school athletics. Friday night is the key night of the week, just like Saturday is for college sports or Sundays for NFL football. This probably comes from the fact that the school year begins in the fall and football games are primarily played on Friday. In fact, almost exclusively so in Richland County now that there are not two high schools sharing Arlin Field as their once was when Malabar was a high school. So, it becomes a matter of pattern to go to games on Fridays more than other days of the week.
I believe it to be only fair to give the girls at least some of the spotlight on Friday nights. They work just as hard as their brothers do and they should get the opportunity to showcase their efforts on the big stage of Friday night.
Secondly, this also applies to academics. Stay with me on this one. Let’s use Ontario and Shelby as an example. They are in the same league as Sandusky. A bus trip from Richland County top Sandusky is more than an hour each way. So, in order get to the game with enough time to be prepared you are going to have to leave the school at let’s say 4:15. You then arrive back at school at 10:30. Your games are on Tuesday and Thursday night, both would require there to be homework completed in time for the next day.
Seems like a late night to me.
As a result, you are forcing girls to either be lax on their academics or have a tougher time as the result of pure scheduling.
Four schools in Richland County are members of the Ohio Cardinal Conference, Mansfield Senior, Madison, Lexington, Clear Fork, and two of them, Plymouth and Crestview, are part of the Firelands Conference. They are two of the very few leagues anymore that don’t schedule girls’ contests on Friday nights. I think it is high time they get with the program.
The main reason I have heard over the years is schools would get hit in the pocketbook if this were the case. Not so, at least not in every case. A good example would be West Holmes, a school in the Ohio Cardinal Conference. They have for many years gotten bigger crowds for girls’ games than for boys. Many times schools that don’t get attendance for girls’ games is because that district does not promote girls games with the same intensity as it does boys.
You have heard this statement in this space before, but don’t your daughters deserve the same respect as your sons?
After years of toil and sweat behind radio station microphones, longtime broadcaster, Jeff Swank joined the new generation of sports followers on the web.
Swank launched his internet radio station with nothing more than some wire, a box with some knobs and switches, and an itch to do much more than just scratch the surface of everything sports.
Richland Source is proud to introduce Jeff as a writer focused on high school sports. He will contribute a weekly column and analysis of a featured game of the week from one of our area high schools.
In addition to his work at Richland Source, Jeff provides complete high school sports coverage for over 70 Ohio schools at his web site, http://www.swankonsports.net76.net/.
