Why does the UHSAA require that students pay for home playoff football games? This is a question many students were asking before the Judge home playoff games against Grand County, which caused a significant hit to the student section in Judge’s first playoff win in a decade. But who really is the UHSAA, and why do they even care if students have to pay or not just to watch their team play?
The Utah High School Activities Association (UHSAA) is the association that manages all high school sports in the state of Utah. They provide the officials, make the rules, organize divisions, and much more. The rules for the entire state are made by the UHSAA in accordance with the regulations of National High School Federation of Sports (NFHS), who make the rules for high schools across the country. While this all seems like all these rules are just made by big committees, there are several ways people can contribute their opinions to the UHSAA and pass those ideas on potentially to the NFHS,
The best way to do this is your school’s athletic director (AD). According to Coach Cordova, the AD for Judge, “all athletic directors are on a committee within the UHSAA, and they get a vote when the UHSAA proposes new rules and regulations. There is also an Executive committee made up of one representative from each division.” For example, Judge is a member of the division 3A region 14, and our representative is from Providence Hall.
The main reason for charging during playoff games comes down to extra costs, a lot of which goes towards officials, but why only during the postseason, and what roles can officials play in changing this rule?
According to Rey Reynoso, a baseball umpire for the UHSAA, “officials are encouraged to propose any rule changes at the end of the season and those propositions are moved on to the meetings throughout the year with the NFHS where the UHSAA has representatives present. Anyone can apply to be an official, but all officials have to go through a training process at the beginning of every season and pass a rules test before the season and postseason. Officials are paid by the home schools for the games during the regular season, but are paid by the UHSAA for postseason games.”
Knowing the tiers of the UHSAA it all begs the question, why does the UHSAA require entry fees from students for playoff games? Well it all comes down to covering the extra expenses that come with playoff games. While the home schools pay officials during the regular season, that cost falls on the UHSAA during postseason, and that in addition to extra costs of renting special venues for championship games, are what leads to the UHSAA requiring fees from students during the playoffs.
