Bank OZK Arena hosts largest competition since pandemic began
This weekend, Bank OZK Arena is hosting its largest sporting event since the pandemic shut down the state basketball championships in March: The Arkansas Activities Association 2020 State Cheer Competition.
“We’re following all the health department’s recommendations; plans were submitted to the health department … so everything’s ready to go,” Visit Hot Springs CEO Steve Arrison said.
Arrison said the two- day event, which began Friday, will bring a couple of thousand people to Hot Springs, with no more than a thousand in the arena at one time.
“What we do at the end of every session is we clean the arena out and we totally sanitize it,” Arrison said. “We have the electrostatic sprayers; we have two or three guys that come through and we spray every seat, spray every restroom, and then we reopen it for the next session. So we’ll have a couple of thousand people — a thousand people at any one time, but in a 6,500 seat arena that’s very socially distanced and very safe.”
“We did an event last weekend,” he said, “and we had no issue at all getting people in and out. The only thing you have to worry about is we can only control what happens inside the building. The issue is the people who want to socialize with people in groups in the parking lot or out on the public sidewalks. You can only control so much from a venue standpoint, or from an organizer standpoint, for that matter.
“But we’ll have people out there directing people to move along and we definitely have the sanitation part of it down. Our guys are trained, our staff is trained in how to use the electrostatic sprayers and we clean the restrooms once every hour. We’re hitting them with it as well, so it’s a very safe environment.”
Today there are three cheer sessions, beginning at 7:15 a.m. A full schedule of events and tickets can be found at ahsaa. org. To reduce money handling and crowded lines, tickets must be purchased in advance online.
“I think anytime any one of the convention centers in the state holds any event it hopefully will give confidence to other groups thinking about meeting, or have meetings scheduled, that these meetings can be done safely; these events can be done safely,” Arrison said.
“I think we’ve seen that with War Memorial Stadium; the State Football Championships have been held safely,” he said. “I think our schools are doing a great job with their local basketball games. They can be held safely. Everyone just needs to work together and we’re going to get through this.”