White Plains CitizeNetReporter - Charge for Sectionals Hockey Game a Little Rich.

WPCNR PRESS BOX. By John F. Bailey. February 15, 2003:At Ebersole Rink Monday afternoon, White Plains High School will play Ossining in the opener of the Section I Hockey Sectionals. The sign on the rink, says admission charge is $6 per person. Think about that for a moment. Six dollars a person? Does that mean that a person has to pay also $6 for each child they bring? Are there skyboxes? Admission charges for high school events are all over the lot. Some schools charge admission, some do not. And where does the money go?

I am taking the liberty of not conducting an investigation of this $6 charge. Ebersole Rink managers told WPCNR the $6 goes directly to the school and they had nothing to do with it. I will check into this, but right now I am invoking the Official News Columnist's Right to Give My Opinion Without Checking the Facts License. So forewarned, here is my take on admission charges:

Before I get going I want to say the White Plains Hockey team has had a great season, and this is not directed at them or the high school in anyway, it is directed at the very clandestine, secretive management of high school athletics in the county:

Let's adapt a consistent admissions policy. Let's say where the money goes up front. Let's report gate receipts and what they are used for, and who gets to decide what to do with the money. And let's adapt the same admission policy for every sectional and non-sectional event. You go up to Gorton in the fall and you pay a $3 admisson to a football game. You go to WPHS at Parker Stadium, there is no admission charge. Can the high schools agree on some consistency? Can there by a code of conduct, some auditing? Theorectically some enterprising students could set up a table and charge admission and no one would be the wiser.

But, I think charging anything over $2 for a high school event is pushing it, especially when you are not guaranteed a good or actual seat. Besides that the quality of athletic event is poor. Sectional playoffs in all high school sports contain a vast number of humiliating blowouts because of the seeding, create ill-will between communities, occasionally cause near riots, are hideously officiated (homering is popular) and do not really prove anything. You are not in a hockey game for example, even guaranteed a seat especially at Ebersole Rink, which I dearly love by the way, but the seating is very poor.

You have to be kidding me with a $6 admission. Whoever set that has to have their head examined. Hopefully, sectional officials will get back to me with a noble defense of their admission charges.

Six dollars. You have to be nuts!


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