This year, varsity basketball had coach Ryan Luhning and assistant coach Mike Nelke came up with an idea to get more fans to come to home games.  That idea was to create a fan club now known as the Clayton Crazies.  This is possibly one of the best ideas I have ever heard presented during my tenure here as a student.
The perks to being a member of the club include free admission to home games and free pizza, with the only requirement being that the student attends a “practice” the day before the home game.
For me, being a sports reporter for the Globe, the high school sports seasons are expensive, an adjective rarely used by Clayton students.  But if I add up the costs of tickets and concessions, the total would be much higher than many would expect.
In the fall, I paid $3 to watch the football team lose all five home games and the game at Ladue that I attended.  In the winter, I am paying $4 to attend any of the hockey team’s games. A hockey team that is 5-13.
Luckily, home basketball games are now free, but any tournament games such as the MICDS Holiday Tournament or the DC Wilcutt Tournament at CBC cost $5 to get in.  So three games in each tournament and I’m suddenly out $30.  That’s not to mention if I wanted anything to eat or drink.
Sure, some tournaments like the MICDS one donate the proceeds from admissions to a charity, which I think is great. But should I have to pay $5 to go watch my fellow classmates play a game in the middle of the season?  In my mind, students from the schools that are paying should have one of three options: a reduced fee of maybe $3, a chance to buy a tournament pass for one price up front, or they should get in for free.
The people setting the admission prices should realize that these are just kids essentially.  Most of us don’t have jobs and choose to spend much of our time on academic accomplishments, only to basically be robbed by adults that wish to make money off of these games.
At the same time, a lot of people are going to say, “but you go to Clayton, you can afford it.”  My answer to that is if I am complaining about these prices [no, I don’t have everything paid for me in life], I can only imagine how disgusted students from other schools are about this issue.
The football team in my mind should have offered a season pass of sorts to students and set up a student section if they wanted to draw more people to the games.  The already paltry attendance was partly justified by the play of the team since no one likes watching their team lose, and although the Hounds struggled this year on the gridiron, the team’s play was not the only contribution to the less than stellar student attendance.
Now I’m not saying that a large student cheering section wouldn’t have propelled the team to more wins, but it sure could have raised the team moral on the field.
Interestingly enough, the soccer team was pretty good this season and did attract more student interest at home games than the football team.  A part of that can be chalked up to the fact that home soccer games are free.
As a sports reporter and general fan of watching Clayton athletics, I understandably have attended more games than the average Clayton student.
The entire topic might just be more sore for me, but the breaking point was when I went to watch my brother wrestle at Berkeley High School and I was appalled at the $2 entrance fee.  That was the first time I had heard of a fee for a regular season wrestling meet.
The postseason is quite different in terms of high school sports costs.  MSHSAA mandates that there be a certain cost to get in to each game, something I think that students should be exempt from paying.  It is just rediculous to have to continuously pay $5 to watch your team play.
If Clayton were to make it to the state final in basketball, and I attended every game, I would be out $35.  That’s nearly a month’s allowance.
Some adults may point to a turn in the recent economy and say that $5 isn’t that much, but to high school students that are about to have to pay for college, the little things continually add up, especially for me. 