Prep Girls’ Basketball- The Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union (IGHSAU) made the results from their basketball survey sent to coaches and activities directors back in March public and here’s some of the takeaways from the survey.
Declining Participation?
Two questions centered around the issue of declining participation numbers for basketball. One dealt with the statewide cause and the other focused on why numbers may be down at the respondent’s school.
There were nine total choices: basketball is difficult, long season, conflicts with club volleyball, other sports or activities, playing time, time constraints, burn out, girls are weeded out early on, or other, and the respondent was to check all that apply.
Interestingly, around 90% of respondents thought statewide participation was down due to conflicts with club volleyball with basketball being a difficult sport coming in second around 75%. None of the other reasons crossed 50%.
Shifting to locality centered thinking, club volleyball conflicts shrunk to around 60%, while basketball difficulty hovered around 70% overtaking the main reason for respondents when it came to their school.
Family Week?
The most divisive question was if the respondents were in favor of implementing a “family week” from Christmas Eve to January 1st with 55.79% of respondents saying no to the family week.
HUDL
Most feel comfortable with the HUDL, a video posting/sharing app for games and highlights, process (83.13%). However, individual responses felt that issues arose with the statewide pool of videos, making it difficult to find film on opponents.
Additionally, a common experience of opposing schools or coaches not posting their film persisted amongst the responses. Another common concern was the cost with the HUDL livestream budgets hovering around $12,000.
How to make the Game Better?
There was a litany of responses for what the respondent would add or change to the sport of basketball with some suggesting the removal of conferences and having a district system or more flexibility for schools to schedule teams of equal talent.
Ironically, the most prevalent answer involved removing something from the game. Coaches and ADs thought it would help everyone if the season was shortened with one suggestion saying to start the season after Thanksgiving and a couple taking the total number of games down by at least three or four.
More
If you would like to see the full results from the survey, then follow this link: Survey Results