I haven't been to states at the Giant Center and not to states at all since Bob Crawford won his fourth title for Milton in 1993. So it's been, obviously, 25 years since I was there.
What stuck me was the general lack of attendance in Hershey this year. For the early sessions, the upper level was not even open and there were lots of unoccupied seats in the lower bowl. Even for the semi-finals, there were only a few people in the upper level and still lots of open seats in the lower bowl.
I had been at the Eastern States Wine Conference in Lancaster earlier in the week for a new project I'm working on, so I did not stay for the finals of AA and AAA (wanted to get home and streamed them through PCN instead). But I was shocked by the low number of people at the AAA finals.
I had done both AA and AAA and have to say it was a lot to see over the three days. I was in the club level, so amenities were about as good as you could hope for, but the air was stale and the lighting was very glarey. That added to fatigue. So I can understand people not making it through the two tournaments. But it looked like there were about 3000 people at the AAA finals.
Is this normal or was this year an anomaly? Does the PIAA need to split the classes' locations (as they did when they first went to two classes in 1974)? It was sad to see so few people at the finals.
