By Jay Carroll
Staff Writer

When I first started writing this article, I agreed with a lot of the students who participate in sports other than volleyball or football that the school runs on a hierarchy system for sports.

After a good interview with Coppell ISD Athletics Director John Crawford, I found out that the belief that sports are a hierarchy here at CHS is far from the actual truth. The truth is, that the athletic department has a set budget for each sport, based on the number of participants and the equipment needs.

“I know football is always accused of getting more,” Crawford said. “But it cost more to outfit a football player than a soccer or baseball player.”

This school has 21 boys and girls sports, and in total there are around 68 teams, when you consider that some sports have JV teams, varsity and freshmen teams. This makes it more and more expensive to fund some sports, when they have more teams and participants.

A reason why people think football receives more funding from the district is the new scoreboard. While the scoreboard is used for football right now, all the sports that use the field can use the scoreboard.

This year, Coppell will be hosting an area track and field meet. CHS Track Booster Club raised money for a new timing system that will be utilized during the area meet. While the scoreboard may have been expensive, it will eventually provide benefits for the district.

“That scoreboard will pay for itself by the advertisements that are on it,” Crawford said. “Then it will actually become a revenue system for the district.”

So while the scoreboard may have been expensive to build, it will help the district in the long run, plus it was a much needed addition to Buddy Echols Field, since the old scoreboard had poor sound, and you could not read the words on the old scoreboard.

Sports are also funded by their booster clubs, which help provide some equipment or buy things to help the team that the district cannot necessarily provide at the time.

“Booster clubs are critical in the fact that they help raise money for the team they are supporting,” Crawford said.

A lot of booster clubs pay for out of town trips, which include hotels, buses and any other needs that a team may need for the duration of their trip.  Booster

clubs provide a lot of things that are vital to the sports programs in Coppell.

It is very methodical to run an athletic program, especially one the size of Coppell. For instance, there is a rotating system for new uniforms. This is where each group gets new uniforms every three years, then the varsity uniforms get handed down to junior varsity in some sports, and the junior varsity uniforms go to the freshmen teams.

I think I was with a lot of athletes at the high school when I thought that football receives more than the other sports, but I was wrong. The team may receive more attention from the students, but that is expected from a Texas high school.