Contact:  John Johnson or Andy Frushour 
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EAST LANSING, Mich.  – Sept. 21 –  A rebound year at all levels of the its Girls Basketball Tournament  helped propel attendance at Michigan High School Athletic Association postseason tournaments for girls to new heights for the second straight year in 2009-10.

Total attendance for 2008-09 was 1,499,552 with 1,065,348 fans at boys tournaments; and 434,204 spectators at girls tournaments.  Attendance is kept for all sports except golf, skiing and tennis, where admission is typically not charged.

The girls attendance figure broke the old record of 403,089 in 2008-09 – a 7.7 percent increase. The boys figure was a drop of 2.9 percent over the previous year, and for boys and girls combined there was an overall tournament attendance decrease of just 1,455 – less than one tenth of one percent.

Girls basketball attendance the previous two years had hit their lowest points since the MHSAA started tracking such figures in 1990-91.  While the total of 166,874 for all rounds was an 8.8 percent increase over 2008-09, it was still the fifth lowest attendance in the tournament’s history.

The reformatted tournament schedule where schools play only one match per day during the District and Regional rounds of Girls Volleyball paid dividends for the second straight year, with 59,400 fans attending District matches and 21,466 at Regionals – both new records.  The tournament series again hit a new high with 96,609, and attendance for the Semifinals and Finals came off their worst years ever in the Fall of 2007 and 2008 to their fourth highest total ever at 9,100 for the three-day event.

Other girls tournaments setting new overall attendance records in 2009-10 were competitive cheer with 22,907; lacrosse with 4,065, and swimming and diving with 5,347.  No boys tournaments set overall attendance marks last year.  The MHSAA Bowling and Track & Field Tournament series, at which boys and girls compete simultaneously, both set a new spectatorship marks with 12,099 for the former, and 36,778 for the latter.

The overall attendance was the third lowest since 1999-00, the first year of the eight-division football playoffs.  The boys attendance figure was its lowest since 1999-00.  Basketball was up two percent last year, but was still the third lowest of all-time at 346,787.  The football playoffs experienced a drop in attendance of over 10 percent, its second poorest year again since the 256-team, five-week tournament began in 1999 with 403,044.

The MHSAA is a private, not-for-profit corporation of voluntary membership by over 1,600 public and private senior high schools and junior high/middle schools which exists to develop common rules for athletic eligibility and competition.  No government funds or tax dollars support the MHSAA, which was the first such association nationally to not accept membership dues or tournament entry fees from schools.  Member schools which enforce these rules are permitted to participate in MHSAA tournaments, which attract approximately 1.6 million spectators each year.

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