(PHOTO PROVIDED / THE VILLAGE REPORTER)
HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETICS … Doug Ute (left), the executive director of the Ohio High School Athletic Association, was the speaker at the October 25 Archbold Rotary meeting. Archbold Area Schools superintendent and current president of the OHSAA Jay Selgo (right) arranged the program.
During its 117-year history, the Ohio High School Athletic Association has only had 11 executive directors. Recently, the current director Doug Ute spoke with Archbold Rotarians about the organization that governs, regulates and promotes high school sports in the state.
Ute explained that before he started as executive director in September 2020, he had spent 35 years in Ohio schools as a teacher, coach, athletic director/administrator, principal and superintendent – observing and operating school athletic programs under OHSAA regulations from a variety of capacities.
Today, some 819 high schools pay a voluntary membership to the OHSAA, whose rules govern roughly 350,000 athletes who participate in 28 sanctioned sports led by 70,000 coaches and officiated by 15,000 officials.
The lion’s share of the organization’s budget (85 percent) is generated from tournament ticket sales. In fact, he said that OHSAA expects to sell about 135,000 tickets online for the first week of the high school football playoffs.
Other revenue comes from corporate sponsorships (7 percent), annual dues paid by athletic officials (5 percent) and school membership dues (3 percent).
He explained that one of the OHSAA’s biggest decisions this year has been restructuring the tournaments for several sports to seven divisions in order to create more evenly balanced, competitive brackets for all high schools.