POLK — Isaik Schoch jumped around at the starting line of Mapleton Local Schools’ annual Hot Chocolate 5K.
It was 10 degrees outside, and snow covered the ground at the Polk Fire Department. Still, Schoch — a runner on Mapleton’s cross country and track teams — took his spot.
He donned shorts, even in the cold weather. In his hands, he held three donuts. Schoch and his friends planned to eat one after completing each mile of the race.
The runners, more than 30 in total, took off, dashing down the street from the department and looping back around.
Volunteers and parents milled about inside the department. They manned an awards station, handed out hot cocoa and donuts and took donations for a “Super Bowl square” fundraiser.
Schoch, a senior, returned first, finishing the 5K in about 19 minutes.
He paused at the finish line and ate the last of his donuts before crossing. Tyler Hartzler, a freshman, followed, and then a slew of other track and cross country runners from Mapleton Local Schools.
“The conditions weren’t ideal,” Schoch said. “There was a lot of ice, and I knew going in that the conditions would be bad, which is why we decided to eat the donuts and throw the race and just have fun.”
The 5K typically raises money for the Mapleton cross country team, according to cross country and track coach, Joe Ortiz.
This year, the 5K funds became part of a huge effort to help cover part of the cost for families whose children want to do track and field this spring. Ortiz, who’s helped coach track at Mapleton for 13 years, said around 90 students have interest in running track. Those numbers are normal, Ortiz said.
But those students have new, higher fees to pay if they want to run this spring, and the track team has a goal of raising $20,000 to help cover them.
Last summer, the district’s board of education voted to increase pay-to-participate fees for athletics. Before June 2023, it cost $75 per student per sport to participate.
Now, for high schoolers, the cost of participation is $400 per sport. At the middle school level, it costs $200 per student per sport. According to previous Ashland Source reporting, fees do cap out at $500 for each middle schooler, and at $1,000 per high schooler.
The district also did away with assistant coaches for most sports, unless they were necessary due to the number of students on the team. Track and football, for example, still have assistant coaches on payroll, according to district treasurer Katy Wiley.
Board members and the district’s treasurer say the fee increases came as a last resort, but were necessary thanks to Mapleton’s continuing budget challenges.
Parents say it’s been heartening to see the community come together to help students pay their way, but have started to feel “fundraising fatigue” set in.
And for coaches like Ortiz, the increases added a new layer of pressure. On top of their responsibilities to prepare their teams to compete, they’ve assumed a heavier role organizing more fundraisers to help their students pay for the team.
All of them say in the long run, their efforts feel unsustainable without the passage of a levy to take down costs.
How’d we get here?
ShaNa Benner and Mindy Scurlock, the president and vice president of Mapleton’s board of education, respectively, are the only remaining members of the board who voted to increase the fees last summer.
Three new members took seats on the board following the November election.
Benner said the decision to raise the fees came after months of debate and trying to find other options. She added the $400 fee is lower than the board initially discussed — they thought about setting it as high as $800, Benner said.
The district has also eliminated five teaching positions and six certified class positions in order to save money, according to previous Ashland Source reporting.
Mapleton tried three times to put a levy on the ballot for voters. Attempts to pass a levy failed at the ballot box all three times. Most recently, it was voted down in November by a margin of 57.11%-42.89%.
“When you haven’t passed levies, I think that the public’s misconception maybe has been, ‘We always make it work,’” Benner said. “But you get to a point where you can no longer make it work.”
The state doesn’t fund extracurriculars, according to Wiley, Mapleton’s treasurer. The district needed to break even when it came to them. Last year, with athletics alone, the district ended with a total deficit of $203,488.39.
The money to make that up comes out of the general fund, and that budget’s already tight, Wiley said.
That conflict isn’t easy, Benner and Scurlock said. But at the end of the day, even though Scurlock and Benner said athletics and extracurriculars are important, it can’t come at the cost of cutting academics.
Maintaining access
Shelly Stackhouse, Mapleton’s athletic director, took over her position in August. Since she arrived in the district, Stackhouse has taken up the mantle of helping students and families find solutions to ensure they can participate in sports.
She said she has worked out payment plans with families who can’t afford a lump-sum of $400 or $200 for their students to participate.
She’s also used personal connections to help cover students who can’t afford to play. Stackhouse said she has gone to clubs, like the Lions Club, to ask for financial help, and many of her friends have written checks to help athletes pay their way.
All of that is supplemented by the work of athletes on teams that fundraise — though fundraising efforts vary from team to team, Stackhouse said.
Still, in her experience, those students that do help raise their own funding for a sport have more stake in it.
“The harder they try to fundraise, the harder they play on the field,” Stackhouse said. “They actually put in extra effort because they work for it.”
Fundraising efforts
Ortiz, the cross country and track coach, said fundraising isn’t out of the ordinary for his team. Every year, the team hosts fundraisers to have money for meets, t-shirts and equipment.
Braylon Goon, a sophomore on the team, said he appreciates the fact that coaches offer fundraising opportunities. He thinks it important that nobody is left off the team due to monetary challenges — something he said Ortiz has instilled.
The difference this year is the amount of money the team needed to raise.
Ahead of the cross country season, Ortiz set a goal that each family would only need to pay $100 for their student to run. Fundraising would cover the rest.
It’s good that with cross country, every kid can participate and it’s no kids left behind. But that’s not the case with every sport.
Angela Rea, A Registered Nurse and Parent
The team achieved that goal, raising upwards of $15,000 this year, Ortiz said. In previous years, fundraising efforts typically reached about $5,000.
“We’ve had a lot of people step up to continue to donate… while at the same time, really putting an emphasis on trying to make sure that we could get pay-to-play down to $100 for all athletes,” Ortiz said. “And I’m certainly not unique. Every good coach at Mapleton is trying to do the same thing.”
Mapleton head football coach Matt Stafford has coached football for 23 years. He has four seasons under his belt as Mapleton’s head coach. Like Ortiz, he said fundraising is a normal, albeit less glamorous, part of a head coaching job.
Stafford said his team raised around $20,000 this year — a record. It covered the full fee for each player.
“There’s people in this community that really care for football, and care for our athletics program as a whole at Mapleton,” Stafford said. “They don’t want to see it go by the wayside. They don’t want finances to be an excuse for kids not to participate.”
The efforts helped put athletics in reach for parents and families, like Angela Rea.
Rea, a registered nurse, said her senior and sixth grader both ran cross country in the fall. She felt fortunate that she could cover her students’ fees, especially with fundraisers bringing the cost down to $100 each.
“It’s good that with cross country, every kid can participate and it’s no kids left behind,” she said. “But that’s not the case with every sport.”
And even though cross country’s fundraising goal was successful, those efforts haven’t come without challenges.
Overlaps and under registration
Jen Haygeman, a registered nurse with a senior on the cross country team, volunteered at the Hot Chocolate 5K. She helped with registration for the race.
With greater need for all the teams this year, she said it takes a coordinated effort to make sure fundraising efforts don’t overlap.
Those overlaps do happen, though. Stafford said usually the football team sells Super Bowl squares. This year, many teams are doing that same fundraiser too. The track team, for example, had them available for sale at the Hot Chocolate 5K.
Haygeman added the amount of fundraisers she’s volunteered for have contributed to a sense of “fundraising fatigue.”
“I’m tired of asking people for money because I feel like I should be able to support my kids and their fees on my own,” Haygeman said.
Overlapping fundraisers aren’t the only challenge posed by the fee hikes. LeAnn Schoch, who’s had multiple children run track and cross country for Mapleton over the years, said the cross country team lost some members to open enrollment.
Ortiz said the team went from having about 45 runners in fall 2022 to about 30 in fall 2023. He believes part of the reason was pay to participate fees.
Stafford, the football coach, also said his team numbers were on the smaller side this year. He attributed it to a smaller freshman class at Mapleton, but said part of it also could have been the increase to pay to participate.
Schoch and Haygeman both worry those losses will continue if price hikes go on. Stafford and Ortiz share the same concern.
“We talk about basic needs,” Ortiz said. “One of the basic needs of your sport is just to be able to exist with people. If you can’t get the people there because they can’t afford it, then your sport ceases to be competitive and ceases to exist after that.”
Payoffs and drawbacks
Wiley, Mapleton’s treasurer, said the district has seen an increase in its income thanks to pay-to-participate.
As of Jan. 26, the district’s income from play-to-participate alone tallied $65,969.20, according to Wiley. That number doesn’t include fees from spring sports — like track, softball and baseball — yet.
Already, it’s an increase of 150.5% from the total play-to-participate income in 2022-2023.
That year, the district brought in $26,335 from play-to-participate fees.
Even as the district has brought in more money thanks to play-to-participate fee hikes this year, parents, coaches and board members worry the support the district received from fundraisers won’t last into the future.
“I’m kind of used to pay to participate,” said Stafford, the football coach. “But still, you can’t sustain this for a long period of time. Eventually, a levy does have to pass.”
Benner and Scurlock said they aren’t sure what the future might look like yet either. The board, with a new composition, will have to make tough decisions about the budget in the coming years thanks to the levy’s most recent failure and the likelihood of deficit spending.
A chapter in their story
Still, parents, students, coaches and board members agree that participation in athletics is an important part of school. It offers health benefits, accountability, teamwork, life lessons, pride, discipline — the list goes on.
That’s why Ortiz said he wants to continue to work to ensure his runners — and, in the coming years, his own children — can play sports at Mapleton.
He worries about what the future might hold with decreased participation and increased fees. But, he plans to continue his team’s fundraising efforts and ensure anybody that wants to run is able to.
For some of his runners, those lessons of teamwork, on and off the race course, have stuck.
“I know my team will always be there beside me, whether that’s a race or other challenges,” said Hartzler, the freshman who came in second at the Hot Chocolate 5K.
At the end of the day, that’s what Ortiz wants students to take from cross country and track. It’s also what he fears would be lost if students couldn’t participate thanks to costs.
“Our cross country program has the quote, ‘The best is yet to come,’” Ortiz said. “So we have that really healthy perspective — and I think most sports have that perspective. But it really can be a great part of your story.
“What we want to be able to do is make sure people have that chapter in their book.”
