Underfunded, unequal high school sports need a glow up

Airport High School has a bowling team. Unknown to most of Airport High, special teams like this one and the fishing team and weightlifting team and chess team are often unheard of and underfunded. Let’s do something about that.

Whether you have heard of a sport or not, the sport itself should not be completely disregarded. As a cross country runner, basketball player, and track runner at AHS, I have experienced this first hand. Many students do not even know what cross country is, or that we have a team.

One reason all sports should be funded equally is due to transportation issues. Some sporting teams have no bus for transportation. No way for student athletes to transport themselves to away games/meets/tournaments/matches, without coming out of pocket for gas money to put in their own vehicle. It just is not fair. Airport’s tennis, cross country, fishing, and most likely more teams do not have a bus. Is there even a point of playing a high school sport without having proper transportation provided by the school?

A second reason equal funding is needed pertains to coaches. Alongside transportation comes good coaching. No successful team has bad coaches and leaders, but to get a well-known, good coach, it costs a good bit of money. Why do we have money to afford good, experienced football coaches and not enough money to afford new coaches to fill in positions of old ones in sports like varsity basketball and swim teams? Good coaching makes for good athletes and athletics in general. The better the athletics are, the more money the school will make from sporting events because not a lot of people will go to see someone lose at what they do.

With more money, lesser known sports can afford new, updated jerseys or uniforms regularly. If cheer can get new uniforms every two years, then every other team should be able to also. The only reason why cross country was able to afford new uniforms a couple years ago was because they had the old uniforms for over six years and had saved up enough money through those years to get new ones. Better uniforms equal better performance and help athletes feel confident and comfortable. Without being able to get uniforms often, that extra comfortability is what teams lack. When the track team got new uniforms after several years, runners started to qualify for state championships, like Jayla J. and Immanuel B. According to ArsenalStation.com, “Sports uniforms are specially designed and made with high-quality fibres that facilitate better performance,” furthermore proving that newer, high-quality jerseys or uniforms could eventually lead sports teams to perform better.

Cheer has a practice facility on Airports campus, tennis has courts, football has a field, basketball has a court, but soccer doesn’t have enough fields for all of their teams, cross country doesn’t have a course and has to dangerously run on the roads, the bowling team has to go to an ally, and so many more sports have to go out of their way just because they don’t have facilities. Why does Airport High play favorites? All teams should have on-campus practice facilities.

Some may argue that all sports should keep the money they make during their events for themselves, but that is simply unfair. The unheard-about sports are because of the underfunding of them.

Some may argue that the popular sports should keep their money, while other sports should earn their money. As if they don’t need to help the other sports. This is simply wrong because some sports do not have the means to host sporting events, and raise money through that. Sports need funding somehow, and football does not need all of that money at once just because people favor the sport more. How is the cross country team supposed to make money through their sporting events if they do not even have the means or facility to host one?

Katie P., a sophomore at AHS, says, “Even as someone who has never played a sport at Airport high school, I can tell which sports are favored and which sports need more love.”

Her friend Jayla W., also a sophomore, agreed, “So many of my friends have talked about the favorites between football and volleyball while in the fall season,” pointing out that there is a football section for football but no student section for volleyball.

All sports should have equal funding and attention. Because without it, your favorite sport might be stripped away from your hands.