For facilities within the city to be viable they must be utilized.
For events in the city to be successful people must attend.
Increasingly in Yorkton that seems to be a challenge.
A case in point was the recent Yorkton Terrier home game Nov. 21, when the seats at the Farrell Agencies Arena were at best sparsely populated.
It was a Saturday evening, with good weather outside so it should have been a great night to attend a Junior hockey game in a city on the Canadian Prairies where hockey fanaticism is practically required for residence. The official attendance was 912 but it would have taken some creative counting for there to be that many breathing viewers that night. Certainly missing season ticket holders are factored into attendance as the seat is technically sold, but missing people means less revenue from 50/50 ticket sales, programs sales and similar revenue sources for the Terriers.
Fast forward a few days and Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Yorkton are hosting the Montreal Canadiens old-timers as a fundraiser for the good work the organization does with youth in the area.
The Canadiens have admittedly been a love them, or not team for hockey fans in Saskatchewan, but they were still players who have played on the greatest stage of all in terms of hockey.
And, it’s not often players who have played in arguably the most famous venue in the sport, with the most heralded team in the game, play at the local arena.
But again the stands were liberally sprinkled with empty seats.
The two events are not isolated cases in the city.
In the summer the local horseshoe club contacted this newspaper looking for some support in trying to attract new players. The club has a great facility in the city. The game is low-cost, easy to learn, and gets people outside, but people are not coming out.
A steel-tip dart league gathers Monday nights at the lounge at the Legion Hall. Again it is low cost, easy to learn, and gets people out and interacting with others. It is a big night to attract a dozen players in a city flirting with 20,000 residents.
The list could go on to fill most of this page.
So what happens if the trend of people choosing to simply stay home tied to their televisions and easy chairs continues?
That is a good question. Teams such as the Junior Terriers and Western Major Baseball Cardinals already have to rely on fundraisers not related to game attendance to keep afloat.
Without participants groups, whether horseshoes, or the local Elks Club may simply disappear.
And if you are the City, you begin to wonder what recreation investment accomplishes if use is in decline.
The answer is to get people involved. Doing that though seems an unanswerable puzzle at present.
As a result seats are empty and participation often in decline, and that is unfortunate on many levels.
