Last weekend’s 3A tournament in the Bay Area brought hundreds of visitors who stayed and ate locally, and business owners of local restaurants noticed.
According to Brian Menten, the owner of Shark Bites Restaurant, the tournament brings great help to his restaurant and others around downtown Coos Bay.
“It is easily the busiest weekend in March, the numbers that weekend are really close to our summer numbers,” Menten said.
According to Steve Schneiderman the president of the MHS booster club, hosting tournament provides a large boost to the area’s economy.
“The numbers are really outstanding,” Schneiderman said. “It gives all the local businesses a lot of business.”
Schneiderman said even though the tournament is a big boost to the community, MHS does not make a lot of money off of it.
“The only thing we control is the concessions stand, and we hire various groups from football to drama to help run it and make a little money for their program,” Schneiderman said.
Along with hosting the tournament, there are multiple preparations that need to be done to make the tournament a success, according to Vice Principal Brian Trendell.
“We start preparations about a week before the tournament starts and they usually go all the way up to the beginning of the tournament,” Trendell said.
According to Trendell, the first year MHS hosted the tournament was the only year that a lot of money was put toward upgrades. Since then, the money spent is very minimal.
“The first year we held the tournament we spent a little bit of money on upgrading the gym and other things,” Trendell said. “But since then we don’t spend very much preparing for the tournament.”
According to Trendell, the preparations usually go smoothly thanks to all of the volunteers and businesses that help throughout the week.
“OSAA comes and helps prepare the gym for the tournament and we have about a dozen volunteers that help as well,” Trendell said. “ORCA Communications works with the technology for the media room.”
On Feb. 3, it was voted in that Marshfield would be the host of the tournament for another four years.
“We have the tournament for another four years now and we are super excited about that,” Trendell said.
