#5: Show Up!

No, that title isn’t directed at our local athletes—who have made a habit of showing up big in big games, from PONY league world championships to the World Series, from CIF championship games to the Super Bowl—it’s directed at the fans.  If there’s one easily fixable, legitimate problem with sports in this city, it’s that attendance is always too low (if only, sometimes, because it could never be too high).

For the CIF semifinal football matchup between Poly and Lakewood, about 12,000 people showed up—that number was thrilling, staggering.  But why?  It was the first time two local teams had met that deep in the playoffs in over thirty years, and both teams have an enormous following.  Yet non-rivalry games that deep in Ohio’s high school playoffs will regularly draw upwards of 20,000 fans, without anyone even batting an eye.  Why?  Certainly the fact that there’s so many other options vying for your entertainment dollar in SoCal plays a part, but it’s definitely not enough of an excuse.  A MaxPreps writer who travels the country covering big matchups every week criticized the city’s fans for not showing up en masse for Poly vs. St. Bonny, the biggest game in the country that week.  In Texas two weeks prior, he said, he’d seen several times as many fans.

As we head into 2009, make it a resolution to set aside twenty dollars a month to go see three LB teams you’ve never watched before, whether that’s Cabrillo soccer, Lakewood wrestling, or Long Beach State men’s volleyball.  Wait, actually, only one of those teams even charges for admission.  The point is, we all know that there’s a ton of high-quality competition in Long Beach, in nearly every sport.  With ticket prices incredibly affordable (Lakewood Poly tickets were approximately a tenth of what it would cost to see the USC UCLA game, and it was an infinitely better contest), and the knowledge that those sales go to support local teams, get out there and try something new.  We guarantee you’ll like what you see.