While NC sports has seen a handful of successes, other schools around the city who excel in continuously excel. The main reason is the money availble to each institution.
Public schools in high income areas and private schools tend to advertise their athletic programs as having more benefits because of equipment and facilities.
These efforts attract students from all over to come and be a part of their teams, leaving lower income areas where atheletes originally reside left with fewer players.
The trend starts from an early age. Private Catholic grade schools participate in Catholic Youth Organization (CYO), which allows students to have opportunities to play sports like basketball, football, soccer and volleyball.
“A fair amount of student-athletes participate in the local CYO programs,” Cathedral Athletic Director Rick Streiff said. “I would say this is a positive experience for our athletes.”
In public schools, organized sports are not offered at school until middle school.
“I believe that panther youth sports is very good with training our athletes, but I do think that it would keep our athletes in the district with sports offered at earlier ages,” Athletic Director Andy Elkins said.
There are also places like Genesis Sports Performance, a gym where student athletes and adults train outside of organized sports. The issue with training institutions like this is the cost; kids in lower income families struggle to find extra opportunities because they can not afford it.
Higher income schools tend to dominate athletics attracking skilled athletes.
“We have a demographic that is paying tuition to attendm” Streiff said, “By that nature you have families who are motivated to do well, and consequently, athletics is very important to the school.”
In the private school systems, everything is paid for by parents and donors. While public schools receive money from the state, they are still impacted by the financial status of their surrounding neighborhoods.
“The coaches, transportation and security is all paid for by the district but everything else like equipment and jerseys is paid for by ticket sales,” Elkins said.
Public schools are funded by taxes ,but the money is used mostly of education, leaving sports to rely on donations and fundraisers.
“I think that students should always come before the money, but if there is no funding it is almost impossible to give the students everything they need,” Elkins said. “There are families that can provide that for their kids but in our district there is a big population that can not afford those kinds of things.”
Private schools spend their funding on many aspects in the school – education and sports alike. While there are sponsorships involved in public schools, they do not have as much access to funding from the parental side.
