Big crowds have Shakopee school rethinking event rules

Football games are a lot more crowded in Shakopee than they were ten years ago.

Attendance at school events has gone through the roof thanks to a booming population, and not all the spectators are sitting in the bleachers. Along with people who watch from the sidelines for lack of a seat at some games, more students are milling around the concession stand instead of cheering on their team. Some arrive after halftime, when they can get in for free. And more squirrelly youngsters are showing up without parents.

The crowd-control issues that come with a bigger community are prompting the Shakopee school board to form a committee that will consider new rules for next year, including charging for admission later in games and requiring adult supervision of young students.

It's a challenge for all school districts, including the one Superintendent Jon McBroom worked in before he came to Shakopee. "Students would come at the end and screw around," he said. "They were there to hook up with their friends and not necessarily to watch the game."

Nothing is set in stone, but here's how school events could be run next year in Shakopee, according to a list activities director John Janke gave to the school board last month:

• Spectators, who can now get in for free after a midway point in many games, would be charged for admission through the end of football games and three quarters of play at other events.

• Kids in seventh grade on down would have to be supervised by an adult in order to get into events.

Shakopee's conversation comes a few months after the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan district ended the practice -- common in metro area schools -- of admitting spectators to varsity football games for free after halftime, a change aimed at making games safer and more fan-friendly. The Prior Lake-Savage district, which sells tickets through the third quarter of football games, began sending parents reminders to supervise children at games a few years ago after "it became more obvious that kids were getting dropped off," said district spokeswoman Kristi Mussman.

Ticket policies like the one in Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan mean extra costs to staff ticket booths, but they can also generate extra revenue, though several athletic directors said that's not the point.

The rules can also prevent students from drinking at games, said Pete Veldman, executive secretary for the Minnesota Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association. "If you don't sell [tickets], they can go out to the parking lots and probably have a few nips and come back," he said.

But McBroom and some athletic directors in other districts say the new rules aren't really about alcohol, either. "If students are going to drink, they're going to drink anyway," McBroom said.

Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis did away with free admission at the end of basketball games and other events eights or nine years ago to keep out "undesirable" stragglers, said athletic administrator Al Frost, Jr. The school has monitors in parking lots to watch for drinking, he said, but "kids were using the gymnasium as a venue to solve their problems."