Does Thursday Night Football still have the same ring to it?
MCPS has been forced to move multiple JV and varsity football games to Thursday nights instead of Friday nights due to a recurring county initiative aiming to evenly disperse referees. This trend mirrors last year’s 2023/2024 football season in which WJ played four of their nine season games on Thursdays as opposed to Fridays.
Despite rumors that this season’s games were moved because of concerns over general safety and security, Athletic Director Larry Hurd assures that the changes were only made due to a lack of referee availability.
“There’s only a certain amount of referees. The county made a decision last year to move some games to Thursday, some games to Friday,” Hurd said. ”We’ve got a shortage of referees. That’s the only thing. It has zero to do with anything other than referee shortages.”
The most important element of this new change is the effect that Thursday night games will have on the crowd size. Attendance on Thursday night games tends to be lower than Friday games, and the ratio of student-to-parent attendance is more skewed toward the latter on Thursdays. With more parents and fewer kids coming to these rescheduled games, the game experience is understandably different. It’s generally acknowledged that lower attendance in games negatively affects the atmosphere and the enjoyment of the spectator and player alike.
“You can’t beat the feeling of a large attendance game. With a mix of students and parents, it’s the vibe. It’s way more fun when you have your friends cheering you on in the crowd,” junior linebacker Cyrus Froozan said.
While students understandably enjoy the games more when more of their peers show up, a higher concentration of parents doesn’t necessarily hurt the noise level. If anything, parents tend to be more passionate than students when it comes to cheering on the team.
“You’d be surprised because I think parents and siblings just know what to do when they’re hyping their kids up. Students might just go for the social setting but parents are there to cheer on their kids,” sophomore JV football player Adrian Hagvall said.
Although game scheduling for future seasons remains unclear, a continuation of the referee shortage means that game dates will continue to be shifted around. Despite a trend in lower student attendance for non-Friday night games, the amount of tickets sold remains high.
The WJ student section can only hope that match officials will become abundant in the near future and that season-long “Friday Night Football” will return.
