“
High school sports are important to the
students, to the schools, to the fans. They are an
important part of the education of the student
athletes,” said Booth, a guidance counselor at
Manual when he isn’t on the sidelines.
He noted, however, that the dynamics of high
school sports have changed with the growth of
social media, the Internet and AAU programs.
“
Those all have created a whole new element
for high school athletes and enable even more
people to follow them. That becomes a differ-
ent kind of challenge for coaches, who have to
keep the focus of their top players on the team
instead of the individual,” he said.
A 1991 Manual graduate, Booth said these
weren’t issues when he was coming up. “There
is more emphasis on high school athletes now
than ever before,” he said.
With the pending opening of the Peak Perfor-
mance Center, the IHSA-sponsored, interactive
exhibit in the new Peoria Riverfront Museum, it
is clear the kind of emphasis that is put on high
school sports in Illinois.
The decision to place the Peak Performance
Center in Peoria shows that the Peoria region —
home of March Madness basketball state finals
as well as the state finals of baseball, softball
and cross country and other big events — is the
hotbed for high school sports in this state.
AFFECTING THE ECONOMY
The museum opens Oct. 20 and IHSA officials
are excited about it, Troha said. So are central
Illinois civic leaders who know how important
all sports, including high school sports, are to a
region’s economy.
Don Welch, president of the Peoria Area
Convention and Visitors Bureau, was general
manager of the Peoria Civic Center when the
IHSA decided in 1995 to move March Madness
from Champaign to Peoria. He oversaw the first
March Madness Experience that has become a
model for other similar events in the country
and knows fans enjoy such interactive exhib-
its. That’s why he’s looking forward to seeing
whether the Peak Performance Center will be
enough of a tourism draw itself.
“
The museum will be a draw, without
question. But it will bring different people for
different reasons. I believe, though, there will
be sports fans who will come for that, especially
after it becomes known it is there,” he said.
Welch has been in the Convention and Visi-
tors Bureau job only a few months but already
recognizes the organization needs to figure out
a way to gauge the economic impact to the area
of all sports. It’s one thing to gauge it on the two
March Madness weekends; it’s quite another
to get the right numbers from regular season
games or tournaments.
“
That is our biggest challenge in determining
the economic impact of sports. We believe it’s
big for the whole year, but the only thing we
have to go by is room night from the hotels. If
those don’t get reported we have no real way
of knowing. For example, in June we had the
state softball tournament in East Peoria and you
couldn’t find a room anywhere in the Peoria
region. But we didn’t get a real accurate count
because not every hotel reported their numbers.
“
We know there is a big impact, but we can’t
put a good number to it. We’re trying to change
that,” he said.
Sue Atherton, vice president of marketing and
sales for the Convention and Visitors Bureau,
said the biggest impact on weekends with a lot
of high school sports activities is with restau-
rants. “Visiting teams and their fans will use the
restaurants, which of course benefit, but we may
not know those fans are even here,” she said.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
THE IHSA PEAK PERFORMANCE CENTER, ONE OF THE EXHIBITS AT
THE NEW PEORIA RIVERFRONT MUSEUM, IS BEING PREPARED FOR
THE OCTOBER 20 MUSEUM OPENING.
11
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