By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Ticket prices are going up for athletics competitions around Alamance County.
The Central 3-A Conference has set ticket prices at $10, so that means for contests at Eastern Alamance, Southern Alamance, Western Alamance and Williams. That marks at least a $2 hike, with league schools charging $8 for varsity and $7 for junior varsity in the past.
The Mid-Carolina Conference, which includes Cummings, Graham and Southeast Alamance, will charge $10 for varsity football and basketball, marking a $2 increase. Admission for other sports in that league will be $8.
Todd Davis, athletics director for the Alamance-Burlington School System, said it’s a matter of attempting to cover expenses.
“Just trying to keep up with extra costs,” Davis said.
Davis said conferences have found it best for uniformity, particularly with multiple counties involved.
“The conference kind of sets it,” he said. “The conference agrees to a price for different sports.”
Jerry Talley, commissioner of the Mid-Carolina Conference, said athletics directors at schools in the league voted for uniformity.
“With the cost of just about everything continuing to go up, they felt like going up in the admission would help a little,” Talley said. “All schools are allowed to sell season tickets and student season tickets at a reduced price set by their school. Other than that, all admission fees are the same.”
Some of the increases are attributed to rising costs for officials. Effective in January 2023, the North Carolina High School Athletic Association boosted pay for officials in all sports by 10 percent (to the nearest dollar).
That came, in part, because of a shortage of officials across the state. Many officials retired and others reportedly reduced their workloads because of abusive behavior from spectators.
The NCHSAA further adjusted some fees for this school year. For instance, football officials will be $90 for junior varsity games, while the fee is $104 on the varsity level.
There also are rising costs related to event security, Davis said.
Davis said there could be ticket price fluctuations for some events with large fields of teams such as holiday basketball tournaments and wrestling tournaments.
The Mid-Carolina Conference has set conference tournament prices at $10 per day in basketball and wrestling, while all other sports are at $8.
Davis, who until about a year ago was athletics director at Williams, said there were times when ABSS might have charged different prices for non-league competitions than for league matchups. That tended to cause confusion for fans who might have shown up for basketball games one night and paid a certain admission price and then faced a different charge a couple nights later.
So Davis said ABSS schools are sticking to their respective conference pricing structures.
Competitions in the NCHSAA can begin August 12 in fall sports except for football, which begins August 23.
In the fall, there’s no admission charges for cross country, girls’ golf and girls’ tennis.
Clover Garden and River Mill are in the Central Tar Heel 1-A Conference, though not part of ABSS. Officials from those schools, which don’t compete in football, didn’t respond to requests regarding information on ticket prices.
