EVENT AND VENUE SAFETY

When thinking about a sporting event the last thing on the mind of an excited
spectator waiting to see his or her son win the state football championship is the safety
measures that have been put in place to make sure everyone at that event is safe from
harm. Keeping people safe is a top priority at sporting events everywhere and it is referred
to as event risk management. Event risk management is defined as the systematic process
of assessing the impact of an incident on the infrastructure, assets and stakeholders and
implementing countermeasures to reduce the risk and mitigate the impact of crowd control
issues, sport-related terrorism, and natural/medical hazards (Cieslak , 2011). In general
terms this means we have clear action plans in place for bomb threats, bad weather, and
health emergencies during events. Event safety and venue security, or event risk
management if you prefer, are at work at all levels of sport but I am sticking to
interscholastic event sport safety for the sake of this paper. The primary objective of this
investigation into event safety and venue security at Saline High School is to evaluate the
action plans in place for spontaneous terror/rivals, and evaluate staff first aid training. In
addition, I will also be giving affective recommendations and feedback on how to improve
the action plans already in place for these situations and training.
Saline High School was the venue I choose to focus on for my research. I emailed the
athletic director on November 9th, at which time he offered to be interviewed. He also
offered to help me in getting the other coaches to fill out there surveys, as he stated in our
interview the coaches have a lot of people wanting them to answer questions like these
and they tend not to respond (White, personal communication, Nov. 19, 2012). I sent out
an email to my other team members inviting them to the interview, they did not come. I
interviewed the AD, Rob White, on November 19th 2012 at 3:15 pm-3: 35pm in his office at
Saline High School. The soccer coach, the football coach, the baseball coach and the softball
coaches also filled out the interview sheets and surveys and gave them to the AD for me to
pick up during the interview. My teammates tried contacting all of the other coaches via
email without success including the volleyball coach, who was out of town.
The data that was collected consisted of various yes and no questions about event
safety and security. The coaches and the AD were also given an open-ended questionnaire
allowing for more flexibility in their answers. The interviews stayed on topic, the interview
questions on the sheets were the only questions used in the interviews. During my
interview with the AD a lot of interesting things came up, for instance rivalries between
football teams. The AD mentioned to me that he had to take special precautions during a
recent football game against Cass Tech (White, personal communication, Nov. 19, 2012).
He was worried about fights amongst the spectators because of the type of fans Cass Tech
has. He also expressed a strong desire to have an average crowd control ratio of 100 to 1
instead of 500 to 1, but that wasnt an option right now (White, personal communication,
Nov. 19, 2012).
The AD seemed to have his staff very prepared for emergency action plans. He has a
laminated emergency contact cards taped in front of the scoreboard operators in case of
emergencies so the information is right in front of them (White, personal communication
Nov. 19, 2012). The student athletes also have to have emergency information cards filled
out by their parents before they can play sports. I was also informed that medical staff is on
site at all times during sporting events in case an emergency occurs. They also do their own
security training, which I found interesting. The AD did mention a place where he feels they
fall short and thats when it comes to things like active shooters. He basically said random

EVENT AND VENUE SAFETY

acts of violence like these are difficult to have an action plan for especially when the
sporting events are held in open areas outside (White, personal communication, Nov. 19,
2012).
In comparison to the ADs certainty on everything, the coaches seemed to be on the
same page. Figure 1 below shows the average level of certainty for each of the coaches and
the AD based on the surveys provided. Figure 1

Event Safety and Security

150
100
50

Mean Score

0
Athletic
Director

Softball Coach

Football
Coach

Soccer Coach

Baseball
Coach

The highest score possible was 120, scoring all fives for 24 questions. The coaches and ADs
numbers actually came out pretty close with the baseball coach being the lowest (White,
personal communication, Nov. 19, 2012) (Seegert, personal communication, Nov. 19, 2012)
(Palka, personal communication, Nov. 19, 2012) (Restrick, personal communication, Nov.
19, 2012) (Theisen, personal communication, Nov. 19, 2012). It is also interesting to note
that the baseball coach did not think that there was safety training for the event personnel
(Theisen, personal communication, Nov 19, 2012). Since I did not speak to the coach
directly I am not sure how much of this was confusion with the questionnaire or his actual
opinion.
After my twenty-minute interview with the AD I do have some recommendations. As
noted earlier in the paper the AD made direct reference to potential spontaneous terror in
our discussions about the Cass Tech fans. I feel the AD needs to be very direct with his staff
when it comes to potential situations that could arise during events like these. He needs to
prepare meetings with his staff and give them examples of things that could possible
happen so they have every avenue covered. He also could try and find some sort of funding
in order to increase his crowd control ratio to the desired 100 to 1. This would also serve to
keep the crowds under better control at all events.
The AD also needs to get a better grasp on the active shooter scenario, especially
today with all the random violence that takes place in schools. He could do this by staging a
fake attack to see how his staff responds. He could then give them feedback and make
improvements on the area where he fell short during the rehearsal. Lastly, I want to make a
recommendation that the coach make sure all staff are aware that medical staff are on site
at all times during events and that CPR and first aid training are necessary for all coaching
staff. In the interview notes I sensed some confusion amongst the coaches when it came to
this, this could only serve to cause more confusion during a time of emergency if not
straightened out.
In conclusion, event risk management is a serious business in the sports world at all
levels. Interscholastically it should be of even greater importance because of the scope of
responsibility put on coaches for the safety of children. Saline H.S., for the most part, seems
to be doing a good job in making sure all their staff is trained to handle these situations.

EVENT AND VENUE SAFETY

Bibliography
Cieslak, T.J. (2011). Assessing event risk. Encyclopedia of Sports Management and
Marketing. SAGE Publications, Inc.: Thousand Oaks, CA (in-press).