The gender equity lawsuit supposedly was filed to help high school volleyball players. Thanks for nothing!
With the court-mandated change in seasons, the state volleyball tournament now will be played Nov. 17. That’s the same day as the Michigan-Ohio State football game. Battle Creek’s Kellogg Arena (the new site of the finals) seats 4,675. Want to guess how many of them will be empty? Can you say “Ghost Town?”
Michigan high school volleyball tournaments used to be played all day Saturdays in the dead of winter. Now they will be played in the fall opposite college football. Won’t that be great for volleyball?
Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo had hosted the state finals since 1997. In those 11 seasons, average annual attendance grew from 7,000 to nearly 10,000 spectators. This year’s finals crowd could be limited to family members and the players’ boyfriends. Maybe not even the boyfriends.
Most of the volleyball players I’ve talked to are livid. They should be. The judge who made the original ruling (Kenneth Enslen of Kalamazoo) and the other judges who rubber-stamped that decision never listened to the athletes, their coaches or school administrators. They must believe the people are too stupid to think for themselves. What a sham this case has been from the start.
As W.W. Jacobs wrote in Monkey’s Paw, “Be careful what you wish for.”