YAKIMA – Attendance at the Class 2A and 1A state basketball tournaments in the Yakima Valley SunDome dipped a bit from 2025.

A total of 19,665 fans bought tickets to attend the four-day event in the SunDome.

That’s slightly more than a 5% drop (1,077 fans) from last year’s tournament.

This year there 11 teams from the CWAC and SCAC who qualified, compared to 10 last March. However, last year's entries accounted for 30 games, one more than last week.

While travel conditions were much better during tournament week than they are now, several others could have led to smaller crowds.

• Locals make early exits: Wapato’s boys and girls teams both qualified, but were done by dinner time Wednesday. Selah, the closest distance of any competing school, saw its boys outset before 5 p.m. on the opening day. The Wolfpack is known for having a strong backing, while the Vikings show great support, too.

• Locals slotted into early – or late – time slots: Besides the aforementioned Wapato squads and Selah boys, the Vikings girls played all four days, but never earlier than 2 p.m., and 8 a.m. in the trophy round. Zillah’s teams played about as far apart as they could on the first two days, as the boys were slotted into the 10:30 a.m. game, while the girls capped the action at 9. That might be a little too early – or late – for some.

• School twofers: Four local schools – Royal, Selah, Wapato and Zillah – sent both teams to the SunDome compared to just two last year – Prosser and Zillah. The Knights and Leopards played the final three days, including evening semifinals, with the Royal’s teams playing for third and Zillah in the championship. While they brought a lot of fans, they were just one crowd for two teams.

• Some that didn’t make it: Naches Valley’s girls fell a game short of returning to state after finishing sixth last year. The Rangers would’ve helped the crowd size.

Some teams don’t travel like others: While Lynden migrates to Yakima for the first week of March to cheer on the Lions and Lyncs, not every town travels as well. Some teams’ crowds were noticeably smaller than the others.

While this year’s attendance was the lowest since the pandemic canceled the 2021 tournament, it was still more than all but one of the five tournaments preceding the shutdown.

PAST ATTENDANCE NUMBERS IN THE YAKIMA VALLEY SUNDOME

2016: 14,569

2017: 22,695

2018: 18,257

2019: 18,400

2020: 17,881

2021: No tournament

2022: 20,891

2023: 20,511

2024: 23,096

2025: 20,742

2026: 19,665