TALLAHASSEE, Fla. \u2014 Leon County Schools could move future Godby-Rickards football games to a larger venue after an unusually large crowd at Gene Cox Stadium left some ticket holders unable to enter and exposed problems with electronic ticket verification.<\/p>\n
School board members discussed the issue during their Aug. 24 agenda review meeting, with officials saying the crowd for the Godby-Rickards matchup was significantly larger than in recent years.<\/p>\n
Board Chairman Marcus Nicolas raised the issue after saying some fans who had purchased tickets were unable to get into the stadium because of capacity limits.<\/p>\n
Nicolas questioned whether the district’s electronic ticketing system is capable of limiting ticket sales based on the number of seats available at a venue.<\/p>\n
Superintendent Rocky Hanna said the system does have that capability.<\/p>\n
If a stadium has 5,000 available seats, for example, the system can be configured to stop sales once 5,000 tickets have been sold.<\/p>\n
But Hanna said officials believe another problem contributed to what happened at the Godby-Rickards game: screenshots of electronic tickets were apparently being shared with other people.<\/p>\n
“People were screen-shotting somehow their ticket and sending it outside to somebody who was in using the ticket to get in,” Hanna told the board.<\/p>\n
Hanna described the situation as a ticket-verification problem, saying people apparently entered the stadium who should not have been admitted.<\/p>\n
District considers moving rivalry to Bragg Stadium<\/p>\n
The size of the crowd has district leaders considering a major change for future Godby-Rickards games.<\/p>\n
Hanna said the matchup may simply have outgrown Gene Cox Stadium.<\/p>\n
“We are going to have a conversation with A&M,” Hanna said. “That game needs to go to Bragg.”<\/p>\n
Officials plan to speak with Florida A&M University about the possibility of holding the game at Bragg Memorial Stadium.<\/p>\n
The superintendent compared the situation to major Tallahassee high school rivalries of previous decades that were moved to larger college stadiums because of intense community interest.<\/p>\n
District officials said the Godby-Rickards crowd was much larger this year than in previous seasons.<\/p>\n
Officials: Capacity is also a safety issue<\/p>\n
School officials stressed that the decision to stop admitting fans wasn’t simply about whether there appeared to be additional open space around the stadium.<\/p>\n
District officials said security practices have changed significantly in recent years.<\/p>\n
Fans are now screened as they enter district stadiums, and officials said spectators are expected to sit in the bleachers rather than congregate in open areas around the field.<\/p>\n
While allowing people to stand in open areas may have been common years ago, officials said experience and security practices have shown that is no longer considered a good approach.<\/p>\n
That becomes especially important during emergencies.<\/p>\n
Officials noted that weather was being closely monitored during the game because of nearby lightning. The district had canceled games the previous week because of severe weather.<\/p>\n
If conditions had required an evacuation, officials said controlling the number and location of people inside the stadium would have been critical.<\/p>\n
Despite the capacity problems, district leaders praised law enforcement and school personnel for handling the packed stadium.<\/p>\n
Officials said fans \u2014 including many who were ultimately turned away \u2014 remained cooperative.<\/p>\n
“There were a lot of them,” one district official said of fans who could not enter. “And it was heartbreaking.”<\/p>\n
Ticket-sharing problem under review<\/p>\n
The district is now working on ways to prevent screenshots or duplicated electronic tickets from being used to gain entry to future games.<\/p>\n
When Nicolas asked how officials could prevent the same problem from happening again, he was told the district was already working on it.<\/p>\n
For future Godby-Rickards matchups, however, officials indicated the bigger solution could be a bigger stadium.<\/p>\n
District officials said they plan to explore the possibility of using Bragg Stadium, arguing the rivalry has generated enough community interest to justify a venue capable of accommodating more fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. \u2014 Leon County Schools could move future Godby-Rickards football games to a larger venue after an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-382283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}