I just do not understand the way we get carried away to avoid the appearance of political incorrectness.

One of the great things about high school basketball is the energy of a packed gym as the student body and community come together to support the local team. We see it more often at the boys’ games than the girls, but one thing I love about this area is the way the boys’ teams support the girls and the girls’ teams support the boys.

Last week, the Sierra Foothill League schedule-makers took all of that out of our hands as we hit the midway point of the hoops season as they do every year. The way the schedule works in the SFL, in order to make sure that boys and girls get an equal number of Friday night games, the boys open the season with a Tuesday/Thursday slate while the girls play on Wednesday and Friday.

At midseason, the schedules swap. It’s the middle week that gets in the way, and the solution they have come up with is to have the boys and girls all play a Wednesday/Friday schedule for that week.

The result was split crowds all over town and empty gyms for some pretty exciting games. Boys’ teams were not able to support their schools young ladies and vice versa. How is that a good solution?

When I lived in the Bay Area, high school basketball was played with the varsity girls and varsity boys playing back-to-back on the same night. Now that might be a great solution. Give the junior varsity and freshmen the Tuesday/Thursday schedule and put the varsity teams together on the same night.

I am not sure of the best answer, but I do know that there has to be something that can be done to create the atmosphere that comes when the gyms are as full as they can be.

- kurtj@goldcountrymedia.com