Lamar County football coach Franklin Stephens, formerly head coach at Tucker, is one of a handful of coaches who played high school football (Burke County) and college football (Georgia Southern) in Georgia, and then returned to coach high school football in his home state. He recalls how the price of playing high school sports has changed through the years.
I graduated from Burke County in 1991. I played all four years, and we never paid anything. The school issued everything to us when we went out for the team: equipment, cleats, helmets, uniforms, everything. We didn’t have a lot of the extras like three or four different uniforms, but we had everything we needed.
After I was cut from the National Football League, I came back to Burke County, got certified to teach and started coaching at my old school in 1996. Even then, we didn’t have a participation fee, and the county still provided the bus service to get the kids home after practice. Burke County is a rural county, but we got support as well from the local businesses.
When I went to Camden County in 2002, that’s where I saw the importance of fundraising. When you are a kid, you don’t even notice or think about those things. We didn’t charge a participation fee, but we had car raffles and lift-a-thons to raise money for the team.
The first time I was exposed to participation fees was when I got to Tucker in 2007. (DeKalb) County didn’t give us much, and we didn’t get (funds) from the gate, either. Places like Burke County and Camden County are small, but they make money off of their gate. We couldn’t do that at Tucker, so we really had to be aggressive with our fundraising.
But on top of that, we had to charge a fee. It was $250 when I got there, but I raised it to $400 so that we could get all of the things we needed. People don’t understand that if you want the spirit pack, the helmet stickers, T-shirts, extras like that, you have to be willing to sacrifice. That’s just the way it is. If you want all the extras that improve and enhance the quality of your program, simply put, you get what you pay for.
But I think the phrase “participation fee” is wrong. No kid is denied the opportunity to play because he can’t afford to pay the fee. But most parents make certain sacrifices in order to come up with the money. I don’t think parents mind paying if you be honest about what they will get in the spirit pack up front and you deliver.
I hope it doesn’t come to the point that it has in a few places, where the economy is really bad, and the school system has said the players have to pay in order to have a team. I don’t want kids to have to pay a fee in order to play. But if you want those extra things, fundraising is vital.
Here in Barnesville, the kids don’t pay a fee, but we get our gate and do fundraisers, too. I want us to have those extra items because at the end of the day, you get what you pay for.
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