NOVEMBER 2017
SPORTS 23
Sports fundraising needs to be improved Chris Moon Managing Editor Fundraising plays a significant role in supplementing the needs of any high school sports team. The money acquired through fundraisers can be used to pay for equipment, jerseys and anything else the team buys to meet the needs of their players. Hayfield’s current process of fundraising is sufficient for raising money to pay for of all of the essential equipment required over the length of a season. Unfortunately, there are several athletic teams that are short on funds, having to fundraise just to cover their immediate costs. Because of the lack of available funds, there is little extra money to pay for the major improvements that student athletes may desire. Instead, the first priority of most teams is to cover the costs for essential equipment that the players and coaches will need throughout the year. “A lot of people think [that] basketball just needs to buy basketballs, and [for] baseball they just need to buy baseballs but there’s a lot of little equipment
[needed] that you don’t realize,” Varsity Baseball Head Coach Mike Shore said. “With baseball, we need to buy buckets, we need to buy baseballs, we need to buy stuff to improve the field, stuff like that. So it’s a lot more than the actual ball that you’re using for the game.” These teams are able to raise enough money to supplement their annual expenses, but some players want to do more with the money they raise. “New sports equipment and personal trainers that are specialized in their sport would be nice to buy with the money students raise during fundraisers,” junior Nick Newry said. “[This would provide] student athletes with a more in-depth instruction of what each individual needs to improve on in the sport they are playing.” To make changes like that, however, teams would have to raise a larger sum of money than they do right now. While the current method of fundraising is efficient for covering the necessary costs, teams who want to make significant changes for their programs will need to raise more money and perhaps do multiple fundraisers to pay for additional costs.
The boys lacrosse team washes a car on Oct. 14, 2017. Photo courtesy of Jaimie Austin
sophomore Emme Brent
What methods of fundrasing could be implemented?
“Going door to door can be time consuming, but also effective.”
There is no restriction for how much a team can fundraise. As long as the players and coaches are willing and able to run a fundraiser, they have the opportunity to do so and raise more money. “The teams are free to fundraise as much as they want, but fundraising takes time, it takes effort and it takes energy from the coaches and from the players,” Shore said. In the end, it all comes down to how much players value the improvements they could make with money. To change the way Hayfield fundraises, students must make their opinions known to those in charge of scheduling these fundraisers. If the students make it clear to the coaches that they want certain things that are more expensive to acquire, sports programs could adjust their fundraising strategies accordingly, perhaps running more fundraisers for student athletes who are committed to providing more money for their sport. If the teams within the sports program want to make it their goal to raise more money, there will be plenty of players who will be willing to help based on the enthusiasm students have had in assisting with the current fundraisers. “We’ve got players who stand out with signs and people in the community who maybe don’t have anything to do with the actual school drive by and [get] their car washed, and we raised a lot of money,” Junior Varsity Field Hockey Assistant Coach Jamie Austin said. “It takes the entire team really being there supporting the event for it to work.”
senior Braeden Muir “We could have a used equipment drive. Any old or outgrown equipment the players have could be sold for fundraising.”