The cost of transportation in a far-flung athletics conference tops the list of school team budgets.

There are many different thoughts around the funding of sports at South and how evenly or unevenly the money is distributed. What is the money really being used for, and are there better ways to spend the funding? 

Some sports teams feel like the school doesn’t distribute money evenly among the teams due to the amount of new equipment that some teams get. Despite this perception, the district allocates the same amount of money to every school’s sports teams each year. All sports teams get the amount of money they need for necessities each season. 

“There’s necessities for every season that we always cover,” South Athletic Director Jim Moore said. “ needs volleyballs, and baseball has to have baseballs. and we have to have officials.” 

The real question is  whether the district uses the money as effectively as possible. The reality is that  the money allocated by the district only goes as far as covering the cost of the necessities: It’s up to teams to raise money for other things they may want that year. 

“The amount of money that the district allocates to athletics is significantly more than teams can fundraise,” Moore said. 

Despite this, much of that money gets tied up in, of all things, transportation for all teams. Each year, tens of thousands of dollars are spent on buses alone.But is there a way that this could be changed to allow more of that money to actually go to what the teams actually want? 

The idea of possibly changing South’s conference has been brought up for a number of reasons, a main one being money. The amount of money put into transporting teams down to Grants Pass, Roseburg and Medford for multiple sports each season is taking away from the money that could go to other items the teams’ might want to purchase. This, coupled with the amount of school time missed to travel for conference games, is raising questions about whether the Midwestern League is the best conference for South to be in. If South switches into a conference with the other high schools in Eugene and Springfield, substantially less money would be put toward transportation, allowing more resources to go to the teams. 

This idea is complicated and still very much in the theoretical stages. Whether it will become a reality for South isn’t yet known, but it could greatly help teams with funding issues. For the time being, teams looking for more funding must still rely on fundraising  to help meet their needs. 

“We have an outside organization called Friends of South,” Moore said, “which is really our booster club. I know that they would love it if our programs would work together to fundraise.”  

It’s possible that if teams and athletes across the school worked together to fundraise, a greater sum of pooled money could then be distributed among teams. This comes with its own set of issues and objections, but it all comes down to what really gets the most money into the hands of the teams. 

As far as funding issues go, South’s aren’t a matter of inequality. Rather, the issues are more about money getting tied up in situations like transportation within a regional conference, and this takes away from how resources can be used toward the progress of teams themselves. 

Article by Maggie McMillen