Sports Funding: The Truth Behind the Disparity

Alex Winn Staff Writer

Discontent regarding funding between girls and boys sports has become prevalent at MIHS. Arguments over who receives more money and how that affects the sports’ results has become a hot topic. The many arguments over how this perceived inequality of funding affects the sports results reveals how little is known about the funding each sport receives.

To play a sport at the high school, athletes must pay $250, and this money is then used to fund the individual program. “The funding is identical [for] every sport on campus … the perception of funding being different for different [gendered] sports is only based on the turnout numbers that they have,” Interim Principal Nick Wold said. “If one has 36 [athletes] and one has 44, there’s a difference of eight athletes and $250 [for each;] that is the pay-to-play model.”

Wold emphasized that the impression of boys sports receiving more money from the school, and therefore performing better, is largely because of fan involvement.

“I think that probably has more to do with the fan involvement and whether or not fans want to go to one event or the other,” Wold said. “The coaches pay, the resources, the gate revenue. All that stuff goes into the general athletics that gets distributed [to each sport].”

Wold used the Girls and Boys Swim and Dive (Swive) teams as an example of the financial equality created by the school district.

Staff Writers: Tulin Alrouk, Eli An, Claude Cobbs, Meg Dahlin, Emily Dunn, Elsa Zepeda Juarez, Lexi Krawiec, Kira Lancaster, Jayce Madamba, Caitlin Riley, Juliette Robadey, Kalden Short, Kat Van Eeden, Julia Weisfield, Alex Winn,

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“Swive doesn’t [charge] to go to those events, and they cost us the same to rent the facility for boys and girls season … The $250 [pay-to-play] gets split, [and] a certain chunk goes to the district office to pay for coaching. The other bit stays here to deal with transportation, keeping lights on, renting the facility [and] officials,” Wold said.

While many students and parents at MIHS claim the district funding is unevenly distributed, that is not the case. The excessive amounts of money in certain sports, such as football, comes from parents, sponsors and enrollment. They organize fundraisers, are boosters and give donations to show their support to the numerous sport teams.

In 2020, COVID-19 greatly impacted the enrollment of MIHS sports, along with the money available to sports teams.

“I’ll give badminton as an example. So pre-COVID, they had 55 athletes to 60 athletes … and then it dropped significantly during COVID to [around 25.] If we lost that, they lost $6,000 in their budget,” Wold said.

The money lost was not taken by the school–instead, it was not available in the first place. COVID-19 was a game-changer for all the sports, especially those that take place indoors. Recovering from the pandemic has had significant impacts on both fan participation and enrollment of the sports.

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“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” is a Rare Shining Sequel

Ashwin Krishnaswamy OpinionsTeam

This Review Contains No Major Spoilers.

Boys sports, especially football, have a higher fan participation, which is why they bring in larger chunks of money. The sport is well-understood, so the number of fans is much larger.

These issues being faced due to the thought-to-be disparity are consistently being worked on by the Mercer Island School District in their Title IX community.

The Title IX group is also made of students, coaches and community members that work together to improve the financial disparities between girls and boys sports.

“If there’s more concerns [regarding funding] … bring it up in our Title IX meetings,” Wold said.

No sports, no matter the gender nor number of athletes, is given a larger amount of money by the school. It is instead brought in through outside sources, but Title IX meetings serve as a way to be involved and hear information surrounding the still-existent funding inequalities in MIHS sports.

“Glass Onion” is a terrific sequel, which matches the original “Knives Out” in wit and drama while adding fresh humor to the franchise.

The movie portrays a tech billionaire named Miles Bron who invites a group of six co-workers to his private island, and for some mysterious reason, Daniel Craig’s Detective Benoit Blanc shows up.

Although the central mystery takes a long time to develop, the exposition of the movie still manages to be entertaining, developing intricate conflicts and backstories between the characters that all get connected and explained by the film’s conclusion.

The characters at first seem like common cinematic archetypes (i.e., buff guy, dumb socialite, etc.), however, the movie gradually reveals their more complex psyches and their individual motivations for supporting Bron. I don’t like when people praise movies for being self-aware simply because they deliberately use character clichés, but “Glass Onion’’ strategically subverts expectations to create realistic and welldeveloped characters.

One of the few flaws in the first “Knives Out” is that director Rian Johnson attempted to lend Blanc a sense of Sherlockian dignity while also giving him a ridiculous notquite-Southern accent. However, in “Glass Onion,” Blanc is thrust into hilariously awkward situations and social dynamics, peeling back a new–and funnier–layer of Blanc’s character. This was a smart decision by Johnson, as Blanc’s unusual accent and persona enhance the comedic moments rather than seeming incongruous with the rest of the movie.

The structure of the movie was unique and clever. The first half was light and funny, but after a suspenseful horror movie-style shift, the events of the first half were retold with added flashbacks that revealed the whole mystery in a new light.

Since Netflix purchased the rights to the franchise, “Glass Onion” will be released on Netflix on Dec. 23, 2022. Make sure to see it.