WOODBURY — Yet another hoop to jump through just to watch your own school’s sports team play: paying for a ticket.
Over the years Nonnewaug has attempted many ways of ticket payments such as: physical tickets, season passes, athlete free entry and the most popular one being online tickets.
This constant adjustment to new processes could bring some complications to spectators.
GoFan is growing more popular for ticket purchases every season, it transitions payments into a cashless process which takes time for people to adjust to.
“More and more people are getting used to the GoFan, and it’s pretty easy to purchase them,” said Nonnewaug teacher and volunteer of facilitating entry to games Karen Sandor. “But I understand how some people could still be getting the hang of it.”
Most just see the transition, many don’t see the reason for why there was a switch.
“Anytime people are handling cash, there’s always the opportunity where stuff gets misplaced or gets put in the wrong spot,” said Principal Mykal Kuslis. “A lot of places are moving towards a cashless system for easy management and payments.”
Kuslis shows another aspect for the transition of physical to online payments.
“It’s very easy on our end because [GoFan] sends a check weekly right to our business office,” said Kuslis. “This actually frees up some of our administrative staff to focus on other tasks rather than managing and counting money along with depositing it.”
Buying tickets, no matter how, inevitably deters select students from attending games. Mainly because they think they shouldn’t need to pay for supporting their own school’s teams.
“[Tickets] are not necessary for games because students and parents are just trying to support one another,” sophomore Bryce Gilbert said. “I don’t even know where the money even goes towards.”
That’s the big question: where do ticket proceeds go?
The reality is the money made from regular Berkshire league games is put right back into the NHS sports programs through an account called the Student Activities Fund (SAF).
“[The SAF] allows us the flexibility to be able to purchase items and equipment we don’t have the money budgeted prior,” said Kuslis. “This year we actually used some of it to purchase a new ice machine so it gives room to be able to respond to some last-minute needs.”
But the most important part about ticket selling in order for athletic equipment to be purchased when needed is advertisement.
“I think we would have bigger crowds if we had even raffled off tickets during the school day or something where students wouldn’t feel they had to pay for every game,” said Sandor.
Bigger crowds, more students, an amazing environment — that’s what Nonnewaug sports is about.
“I know if people don’t go to my games because they didn’t want to pay I would be discouraged,” said sophomore Rosie Makarewicz. “I love the energy and environment when people go to my games and I try to do the same but it’s hard when I have to pay every time.”
As NHS tries to explore new, engaging options for fans and spectators there needs to be a reflection on what succeeded in the past.
“We have done season passes in the past years,” Sandor said. “I think it would be a good idea to instead of raffling off amazon gift cards for the attendance we would raffle off season passes to the games.”
Schools and athletic departments cannot predict the future, especially when it comes to ever-climbing expenses, so ticket profits are necessary even if they are bothersome.
“In a perfect world, we wouldn’t charge and we just let everybody come but because we do have budgetary restrictions,” said Kuslis. “It is a good way to help supplement direct funding for sport teams. ”
