The costs associated with high school sports

Having children in high school sports elicits the feelings of teamwork, competition, success and hopefully the joys of friendship. But there is a cost, sports specifically the equipment, technology and uniforms are not free. In many districts across the United States it may not cost you anything to participate - and parents may not require fundraising and sending in money request after request.

 
In my district in Wisconsin the schoolboard nor the school itself does not provide a set budget to coaches and teams. At least what I have gathered from many discussions with our athletic director, coaches and schoolboard employees. The teams are on their own to raise money for uniforms, helmets, balls, poles, mats, you name it. The students pay a fee, "red card" to the school each season. The fee is applicable to each sport played. That fee does not go into a specific sports & athletics fund. My understanding is that it goes into the general fund, which may come back to support facilities improvements. It does not go to pay for the individual needs of a team or individual.
  Enter the Athletic Boosters Club, a parent lead organization whos purpose is to provide funds to help offset the costs associated with playing sports. With more than 20 sports including e-sports the organization fulfills coaches requests on a monthly basis along with a number of scholoarships for secondary education, be it a college, university, tech or vocational program.
  Being part of the WABC for three years now I've experienced first hand the profound effect we have on students, coaches and the sports. Our fundraising has offset cose to $200,000 in expenses that our school board either can't afford or will not afford - without potentially affecting other programs across the district.
  I stepped into the role of Special Projects for the board to help fill a vacancy that was present for two years. This roles main purpose is to fundraise. These are big shoes - being that the organization has been around for more than 20 years we've raised a lot of money. But the costs associated with high school sports - like many things in our world only continues to increase.
  Our biggest fundraising activity is not selling wreaths or chocolate bars. It's not running laps around the track or swimming laps in the pool. It's Trivia! This amazing community has an annual trivia night that from it's early days (19 years ago) raised about $20,000 in its first event. That's impressive. When I attended my first trivia night in 2022 we raised an estimated $22,000. Not bad for coming out of the pandemic. Being new the board - our president, vice president and secretary were all new - and we wanted to do more. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing but we still planned, prepared and executed trivia night on our own. And we raised $28,000 in 2023.
 
  We have continued to refine our craft, better plan the event, get more parent and student involvement. Now having better grasph of the financial costs associated to the expenses and payouts and an agressive plan focused on more sponsorship and bigger payouts we have continued to exceed our expectations. In 2024 we raised just over $31,000. And in 2025 I'm proud to say we raised in excess of $36,000 along with our first ever table sellout 36 hours before the event started.
  We will be in a position to now fulfill more requests than ever before. Replacing equipment and tools, some purchased in the early 2000s with modern and safer equpiment with the hope that our athletes will excel in their sports. And provide more scholoarship opportunities than ever before.
  Checkout my podcast Between The Lanelines where I talk about officating, sports and will have an episode dedicated to the orchistration of Trivia Night and hopefully give you inspiration to do more for your high school athletes.