Harvest Prep vs Africentric

[Spartan]

Who wins this regional final?

[indians10]

I don't think anyone in this district cares,do you?

[Raider6309]

Africentric by 5. This will be a very physical game. Prep can't afford to have a terrible 1st half like they did against Peebles or it will be a 10+ pt win for Africentric. Should be a fun game to watch

[anderson2012]

I don't think anyone in this district cares,do you?

I do.

[G.W.A.]

This game may break the attendance record at the convo

[bman]

I'll put the over-under at 500.

[4thgoal]

I'll put the over-under at 500.

Unless you are including the players, cheerleaders, announcers and referees, I think you are way high!

[SOCFAN1430]

Can't speak for Harvest Prep but a few years ago when Africentric played Eastern Pike at Logan in the Regional Final the Nubians were lucky to have had 100 fans in attendance. Those 100 were loud and proud though!

[Spartan]

I think basketball fans care. The amount of fans shouldn't matter. Maybe there are some real world socio-economic factors that limit fan base for them. These are still kids working together to accomplish something bigger than themselves. Working towards their goals and dreams. Learning life lessons.

[4thgoal]

I think basketball fans care. The amount of fans shouldn't matter. Maybe there are some real world socio-economic factors that limit fan base for them. These are still kids working together to accomplish something bigger than themselves. Working towards their goals and dreams. Learning life lessons.

I agree with part of what you are saying, but the real reason there will be next to no attendance for this game is that the kids on the team are not part of a community like most teams in our area. They are not kids that have known eachother since a young age and played biddy ball together. These teams are kids that were brought together via AAU to win basketball games and therefore do not have the same community support.

[anderson2012]

I think basketball fans care. The amount of fans shouldn't matter. Maybe there are some real world socio-economic factors that limit fan base for them. These are still kids working together to accomplish something bigger than themselves. Working towards their goals and dreams. Learning life lessons.

I agree with part of what you are saying, but the real reason there will be next to no attendance for this game is that the kids on the team are not part of a community like most teams in our area. They are not kids that have known eachother since a young age and played biddy ball together. These teams are kids that were brought together via AAU to win basketball games and therefore do not have the same community support.

They're not part of a community like most teams in your area because a) common unit of family in inner-city Columbus is different than a unit of family in say, Ironton and b) Columbus public schools abandoned the neighborhood schools system years ago, so there is a ton of fluidity in the movement of kids and their (in many cases non-existent) families through 12 years of schooling. There are very few kids that actually attend a direct feeder system, i.e. a Beechcroft grade school, a Beechcroft middle school, a Beechcroft jr high, and eventually Beechcroft HS. There's all kinds of explanations for it, but using a sociological imagination we can infer it can be due to changes in family structure, child custody, moving around all over Columbus (think apartments or HUD). In many cases its because of the deterioration of neighborhoods as well.

In reality, basketball isn't the impetus for most of these kids' lives but it can be a catharsis for the plethora of socioeconomic inequalities they've bore the brunt of, in addition to being slighted by decades of institutional marginalization and inherent discrimination based on the color of their skin (think gentrification, police profiling). Now there are certainly kids that live and breathe basketball and have gone to Africentric just to play basketball, yeah. Does Africentric and Columbus City Schools exploit the demand for a basketball powerhouse and selective enrollment school? Absolutely yes they do. Are the kids and their parents to blame? Not necessarily, you can't fault kids for trying to figure out their best path.

Harvest Prep will probably bring a decent amount of fans because they have a new athletic administration that is pretty proactive in incentivizing attendance and offering means and modes of transportation so that anyone can come down, so you'll probably see a couple spirit buses (that is where sometimes socioeconomic difficulties result. Franklin County to Athens round-trip is time-consuming and gas-consuming. Plus my best guess is many of these people get off work at 5, inside I-270 in Columbus. This game is at 7pm on a common workday). It's definitely not the same as whole villages and towns shutting down and seeing Convo parking lots full of cars with county tag 73, 01, etc. Those are very special things I've always been in awe of and that's what makes these games at the Convo so special and invaluable to casual basketball fans like me.

HP and Africentric face their own issues when it comes to fan attendance and unfortunately it's often a blanket generalization placed on the Central Ohio D4 teams regarding travel because the two best teams just don't have great fan-bases. I said this on a different thread, schools that are like FCA, Newark Catholic et al will bring a lot of fans to the Convo if they ever get that far.

As for the game, play ball again young men. It doesn't matter if they're playing in front of 400 or 4,000... this is a basketball game, not a cheering contest.

[moose]

I have not seen catharsis, gentrification, incentivizing, impetus and fluidity used in a post on this site since Dr. Baker from Chesapeake used all them words in a run on sentence about basketball and its influence on veterinary medicine. That's some good stuff.

Go Prep.

[tomcat fan]

As a Trimble fan, I'd like to see Africentric win the whole thing

[ONE OF A KIND]

I have not seen catharsis, gentrification, incentivizing, impetus and fluidity used in a post on this site since Dr. Baker from Chesapeake used all them words in a run on sentence about basketball and its influence on veterinary medicine. That's some good stuff.

Go Prep.

That's a great post right there.

Hidden within the attempt to impress us with the mastery of advanced vocabulary in the earlier post, I found a sober response to GWA's humor.

[anderson2012]

I have not seen catharsis, gentrification, incentivizing, impetus and fluidity used in a post on this site since Dr. Baker from Chesapeake used all them words in a run on sentence about basketball and its influence on veterinary medicine. That's some good stuff.

Go Prep.

That's a great post right there.

Hidden within the attempt to impress us with the mastery of advanced vocabulary in the earlier post, I found a sober response to GWA's humor.

At least I used those five words right. There's nothing advanced about the word "incentive", correct?

Back to the game, since that's what this thread is about: I think this is a game that will be low-scoring and will decided by turnovers alone. Africentric has a height advantage but HP swarms very well off the boards to the ball. If HP has a strong night from three point land then it's over.

[ONE OF A KIND]

formerfcfan wrote: At least I used those five words right. There's nothing advanced about the word "incentive", correct?

Back to the game, since that's what this thread is about: I think this is a game that will be low-scoring and will decided by turnovers alone. Africentric has a height advantage but HP swarms very well off the boards to the ball. If HP has a strong night from three point land then it's over.

You probably did use those five words correctly. I did not examine your post that closely. I don't take very many posts on here that seriously. I see that you do, and I'm okay with that, really.

[anderson2012]

formerfcfan wrote: At least I used those five words right. There's nothing advanced about the word "incentive", correct?

Back to the game, since that's what this thread is about: I think this is a game that will be low-scoring and will decided by turnovers alone. Africentric has a height advantage but HP swarms very well off the boards to the ball. If HP has a strong night from three point land then it's over.

You probably did use those five words correctly. I did not examine your post that closely. I don't take very many posts on here that seriously. I see that you do, and I'm okay with that, really.

That's all fine and well; it is a post that can take a while to chew and swallow if you're actually interested in that sub-topic. I'm not one of those sports board guys that tries to one-up everyone with "fancier" words, but my background and how I've made and continue to make a living is in the field of Sociology so it's just second nature for me to discuss a topic regarding socioeconomic inequality using terms such as "gentrification" and "catharsis" to describe situations such as this, because they fit the context of the discussion well (not to mention they don't have synonyms... both are processes and the latter goes back to the days of Aristotle). It's not a matter of me taking posts on here seriously, but posts that call out a person's vocabulary and distract from a worthwhile discussion are quite frankly uncalled for.

I'm not quite sure what kind of discussion we'll really get on this thread since it's pretty much a given the majority of Southeastern Ohio sports fans aren't really interested in this game, but since the topic of low attendance from the two schools has been used before as a slight I figured I'd offer a perspective on it. I remember when Harvest Prep brought 15 fans, literally, to their league games that were 20 minutes away before they got the ban-hammer from post-season play and how they brought like seven fans their first year on probation. I know Africentric and most city league schools also deal with really small followings that are disproportionate to the number of the kids in their program, and there are reasons why - many of which I have stated. The "crowd" argument I've seen and heard used countless times just to slight those programs, and it ends up hurting the kids. The easiest answer would be to chalk it up as a direct consequence of recruiting, or lack of loyalty, or just general apathy. But would many of you still think that's the case if you were one of those parents and you had difficulty getting time off of work so you could watch your kids' play on weeknights and in the tournament? Or if you were a kid that grew up in a broken home, didn't grow up in a nuclear family + stable household and had to change schools all the time? No adults there to watch you play, no family members to congratulate you on a game well played?

That's the reason I even make posts such as the one above; we can all consider and learn something new each day. It's a healthy way to use your brain. And if contributing to intelligent discussion on this thread doesn't interest you, then I'm okay with that. Really.

[bman]

It would be nice to have an option to move this type of game to Pickerington North if both Central teams win. Really no reason for them to have to make trip down to Convo. That may help attendance in future years

[courier]

I have not seen catharsis, gentrification, incentivizing, impetus and fluidity used in a post on this site since Dr. Baker from Chesapeake used all them words in a run on sentence about basketball and its influence on veterinary medicine. That's some good stuff.

Go Prep.

Great to see you back with a little levity on an otherwise testosterone filled sports site.

[G.W.A.]

240 max on attendance to watch two convicted cheating nonsoutheastern OH schools play. Yippeeee