SIDEBAR TOPIC - How Important is Football?

[Rebel-Fan-74]

A co-worker who is a Gaffney Graduate, Gaffney Fan and now a Gaffney Dad, went to the school to pick up his son from wrestling practice and left amazed. All the money poured into the football stadium and practice facilities, the wresting team was practicing in the hallway!!!!

He was quite upset. Mats rolled out in a foyer and hallways because they didn't have any where else to practice.

I know wrestling is not a revenue generating sport and probably costs 99.9% of the schools that have a prgram rather than breaking even or making any money, but Gaffney has a good program and some good wrestlers. Everyone who knows anything about wrestling knows you can be an Individual State Champion regardless of what the "TEAM" record is...

I guess I'm wondering if other schools have similar issues with "NON-REVENUE" sports.

[Penguin]

Every one of the Beaufort County Senior High Schools suffers in spades from that very thing. Aside from Football and Basketball, every other sport, boys or girls, costs the athletic department money. Travel is the biggest expense for this county. With one 1A, one 2AA, one 3AAA, and two 4AAAA schools, this county winds up traveling both boys and girls teams, cheerleaders, and coaches, nearly everywhere in the state. To further complicate that mess, only Beaufort and Bluffton have had any kind of real success come playoff time, where a lot of extra monies can be garnered. The run to state runner ups for Beaufort in 2007 landed Beaufort High with a windfall.........most of which went into upgrading facilities like the weightroom.

Even worse, we now have a school superintendent who does not place great importance upon sports period. This has meant reduced travel expenses by manipulating schedules, mandatory scheduling of all county schools, and an overall reduction in participation.

Yet another, more serious, result of this lack of funding, has to do with the coaching staffs. These schools do not have adequate funding to hire the necessary assistant coaches, and certainly not any highly qualified ones. Our Head coaches must also be educators, essentially making coaching a secondary occupation paid as a stipend. It is these types of restrictions that make it hard for County schools here to compete.

So, yes, Beaufort County fits into that category.