Kentucky High School Athletic Association Commissioner Julian Tackett says the state basketball tournaments will look different this year because of COVID-19 and a 15 percent attendance restriction at Rupp Arena which, due to social distancing will only allow ticket groups of twos, three and fours.
Tackett told the KHSAA Board of Control today that the staff is looking at the potential of having four single game sessions on the first three days of the tournaments instead of the usual doubleheaders.
"That is strictly to benefit the participating teams," Tackett said. "Right now, if we use the current social distancing configuration at the arena, the end zones, if you combine all four sections, would have 532 seats. If we can use every other row, which we currently can't do because it's not quite six feet, but we continue to work on it, then it goes up as high as 664 seats. Our initial allotment of tickets we send out to schools is around 900 tickets in most years. So if we're gonna try to have doubleheaders, you just cut that attendance possibility for a school from 532 to 266 if my math's right. So now you're barely able to get the team party with four tickets per person. We don't wanna do that with a state championship. We wanna try to get the community there.
"If we go three hours apart, 3-15 maybe, we know we empty [the arena], bring back in a new group, empty, bring back in a new group and we can play four games and still not be there 'til midnight. That's currently the discussions."
The commissioner said other likely changes include having the cheerleaders in the upper deck, recorded versions of the national anthem instead of live performances and a relocation of the media because the team benches will be spread out where the media usually located.
Tackett also told the Board of Control that revenue from the state football championships was down about 40 percent.
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