Northwood athletic programs continue to have limited money for offseason coaching and equipment upgrades this year. This is due to difficulties in fundraising what is needed on top of funding provided by IUSD.
Athletics needs often exceed IUSD provided funding, which only covers costs like in-season coach pay, game transportation and maintenance for protective equipment. The athletics department wants to hit a $450,000 fundraising goal that is meant to pay for upgrades like extra coaching, uniform maintenance and larger equipment purchases. However, individual teams often miss fundraising targets, forcing them to compromise on these expenses.
“As far as our goals that we have, no, we never really get close to raising enough [money],” wrestling head coach Kyle Ennis said. “That’s the hardest part of coaching, is raising money for the team.”
This has impacted boys’ football uniforms. Football would ideally have six sets of uniforms, with varsity, JV and frosh/soph levels each having home and away sets. But this year, the team was only able to maintain one home and one away set that varsity and JV share, according to head coach and athletics director Erik Terry. As a result, some frosh/soph football players had to wear old, incorrectly fitting uniforms.
Funding shortages also limit the number of coaches teams can hire. An athlete-coach ratio of around 12:1 is ideal, according to Terry, but IUSD has only been able to pay for around two in-season coaches for varsity teams and one each for frosh/soph and JV level. The only exception is football. This creates worse ratios, such as the roughly 20:1 ratio for boys JV and frosh/soph soccer.
“Really working on each athlete and the fact that they’re doing things the right way and that they’re focused, that’s tough to manage when you have one coach and 50-plus athletes,” Terry said. “The way that we talk about it in athletics is if you asked a math teacher to teach 55 students, how good of a job are they going to do across the board to meet the needs of all those students?”
Making big-ticket purchases, like full team uniform sets or large equipment, is also challenging with these persistent costs straining the budget.
In wrestling, the mats cost more than the team’s $8,000 annual funding target, meaning the team currently uses a single eight-year-old mat. According to Ennis the mat should have retired, but their budget prevents the team itself from investing up front in new equipment.
Ennis said as part of next year’s new gym addition, a one-time project funded by IUSD’s Measure E facilities modernization, the team will receive one new mat. This would allow wrestling to hold tournaments: a way to fundraise by charging non-Northwood teams to participate.
“We get tons of money literally just to have teams come over and compete at our school,” Ennis said. “So start there, raise money, buy more mats as we go—and then eventually we can run a tournament that pays for the whole season.”
Terry also said teams should emphasize funding methods other than donations, which made up about half of funds raised in the 2023-24 school year. Hands-on events like bake sales, Christmas tree businesses or car washes generate money for team budgets independent of families’ financial ability to donate.
“You have to change the culture of the program and let the athletes understand that, no, this is part of what it means to be in this program. It’s not just showing up for practices and games,” Terry said. “And I think that understanding that you were a part of whatever this fundraising campaign was for gives them more pride of ownership than just being given something.”
