Shot Clock and Baseball in Montana Sports

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kennethnoisewater
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Re: Shot Clock and Baseball in Montana Sports

Post by kennethnoisewater » Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:36 pm

LTown Cat wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:28 pm
kennethnoisewater wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 1:48 pm
Both of these will be interesting. I know some schools voted for both propositions and still don't know how they'll pay for either.

Shot clock will be welcomed by all fans and most coaches. Schools will have a pretty major capital investment to buy the clocks and have them wired into the building. If their current scoreboard system doesn't support a shot clock, they may have to replace the whole setup, which will cost $10,000 and up. Generally, for every high school game, schools pay (if they don't have volunteers) an official scorer (official book) and someone to run the clock. The addition of a shot clock will add another worker just to manage that. And scorer's tables at most schools don't have the space for another person, so that's a concern as well. There will be schools that will pay $20-30k just to get set up correctly, although it can be done much cheaper. This change was inevitable though, so it's time for schools to bite the bullet and just get it done.

Baseball is one I'm not in support of personally. As others have mentioned, AA schools shouldn't have a ton of trouble. Paying coaches, renting fields (few schools have the space to accommodate baseball facilities even if they have the money to build them), paying umpires, buying equipment, and paying for travel will cost a lot. I'm sure it'll be $50k and up for a AA program with JV and Varsity, 4-5 coaches (at $5k each), 10 bus trips (at $500 each), field rental and maintenance (say $5k), a couple hotel stays ($1500/night), umpires ($1,000), ticket takers/scorekeepers/janitors, and various equipment. Some of this can be volunteer, some will be fundraised. Not a dealbreaker for AA schools and some A schools.

But my issue with it is something will probably suffer at the smaller schools. It's a challenge these days to get enough kids out for sports to justify the costs. These sports are expensive. The capital investment a school district makes for, say track and field, which brings in zero revenue, is significant, as is the annual investment. If you have 50-100 kids out, it's a worthwhile expense. But kids are increasingly not coming out for sports as much anyway, and to take more of that away is concerning. And I'm all for giving kids as many options as possible, but small schools have to make big decisions about it. I'm familiar with Bigfork, but there are dozens of schools across the state who aren't going to be able to put together baseball teams and will lose kids to nearby schools where they have more opportunities. These enrollment issues have real consequences for other sports and for general school funding. If taxpayers realized how many hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on high school sports every year in even the small districts, they'd want to know that they weren't throwing money at sports with low participation numbers.

Oh, and I don't think we're too far out from lacrosse becoming an MHSA sanctioned sport. If baseball and lacrosse are really that popular, great. But I think we'll start to see schools drop sports like tennis, golf, or soccer.
Not trying to argue...just want to point out that you can buy two portable shot clocks (they sit on the floor on a tripod) for $800. My son played AAU for three years and many gyms used them. They aren't the perfect solution but for the money they are serviceable.
That's why I was saying it can be done much cheaper. I'm sure plenty of schools will do that in the short term and maybe even the long term. But I think a lot of schools (and their fan bases) will see the more permanent shot clocks at other schools and push to get that. I think the ongoing concern financially will be finding another person for every game--freshman, sophomore, JV and Varsity. It's hard to find people to fill those roles as it is, especially for sub-varsity. I'd encourage everybody to volunteer (or you might get paid) to run the clock or serve in some way for all those games!


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ghobs95
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Re: Shot Clock and Baseball in Montana Sports

Post by ghobs95 » Tue Feb 01, 2022 11:07 am

kennethnoisewater wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:36 pm
LTown Cat wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:28 pm
kennethnoisewater wrote:
Mon Jan 31, 2022 1:48 pm
Both of these will be interesting. I know some schools voted for both propositions and still don't know how they'll pay for either.

Shot clock will be welcomed by all fans and most coaches. Schools will have a pretty major capital investment to buy the clocks and have them wired into the building. If their current scoreboard system doesn't support a shot clock, they may have to replace the whole setup, which will cost $10,000 and up. Generally, for every high school game, schools pay (if they don't have volunteers) an official scorer (official book) and someone to run the clock. The addition of a shot clock will add another worker just to manage that. And scorer's tables at most schools don't have the space for another person, so that's a concern as well. There will be schools that will pay $20-30k just to get set up correctly, although it can be done much cheaper. This change was inevitable though, so it's time for schools to bite the bullet and just get it done.

Baseball is one I'm not in support of personally. As others have mentioned, AA schools shouldn't have a ton of trouble. Paying coaches, renting fields (few schools have the space to accommodate baseball facilities even if they have the money to build them), paying umpires, buying equipment, and paying for travel will cost a lot. I'm sure it'll be $50k and up for a AA program with JV and Varsity, 4-5 coaches (at $5k each), 10 bus trips (at $500 each), field rental and maintenance (say $5k), a couple hotel stays ($1500/night), umpires ($1,000), ticket takers/scorekeepers/janitors, and various equipment. Some of this can be volunteer, some will be fundraised. Not a dealbreaker for AA schools and some A schools.

But my issue with it is something will probably suffer at the smaller schools. It's a challenge these days to get enough kids out for sports to justify the costs. These sports are expensive. The capital investment a school district makes for, say track and field, which brings in zero revenue, is significant, as is the annual investment. If you have 50-100 kids out, it's a worthwhile expense. But kids are increasingly not coming out for sports as much anyway, and to take more of that away is concerning. And I'm all for giving kids as many options as possible, but small schools have to make big decisions about it. I'm familiar with Bigfork, but there are dozens of schools across the state who aren't going to be able to put together baseball teams and will lose kids to nearby schools where they have more opportunities. These enrollment issues have real consequences for other sports and for general school funding. If taxpayers realized how many hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on high school sports every year in even the small districts, they'd want to know that they weren't throwing money at sports with low participation numbers.

Oh, and I don't think we're too far out from lacrosse becoming an MHSA sanctioned sport. If baseball and lacrosse are really that popular, great. But I think we'll start to see schools drop sports like tennis, golf, or soccer.
Not trying to argue...just want to point out that you can buy two portable shot clocks (they sit on the floor on a tripod) for $800. My son played AAU for three years and many gyms used them. They aren't the perfect solution but for the money they are serviceable.
That's why I was saying it can be done much cheaper. I'm sure plenty of schools will do that in the short term and maybe even the long term. But I think a lot of schools (and their fan bases) will see the more permanent shot clocks at other schools and push to get that. I think the ongoing concern financially will be finding another person for every game--freshman, sophomore, JV and Varsity. It's hard to find people to fill those roles as it is, especially for sub-varsity. I'd encourage everybody to volunteer (or you might get paid) to run the clock or serve in some way for all those games!
As a high school basketball official, this is my biggest concern with going to the shot clock. There are already commonly issues with finding people to run the clock, especially for sub-varsity games. And that's the easy job; stop it when you hear the whistle. The shot-clock operator has a whole different set of rules they need to know, wrt when it resets and everything.



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