Louis Sharp knows there’s always a project.
It’s become clear to Sharp in more than five years as president of Heritage Academy’s sports boosters that there’s always something that needs to be done. That isn’t limited to the Patriots’ athletic programs, either — Sharp said the booster club’s role extends to the entire school. The club even bought a security system to ensure students’ safety.
“Just anything to make Heritage Academy better for our students is kind of our mission,” Sharp said.
This year, though, Sharp and the Patriots’ sports boosters won’t get to everything. They’ll likely have to put a plan to replace the bleachers in the gymnasium on the back burner because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The money needed for the project isn’t there, and it’s giving Sharp and Heritage Academy’s sports boosters a “different feel,” he said.
“We’ll tighten our belts and push through it, but it certainly has made us take a step back,” Sharp said.
It’s just one of the consequences of the pandemic on booster clubs at Golden Triangle area high schools, and there might be more to come.
With fewer home sporting events and attendance limits, concession sales have dropped significantly. Donations from parents aren’t coming in as usual, and local businesses that sponsor teams are understandably pulling back.
Still, Columbus High Falcons Football Booster Club president Shirley Thompson said, booster clubs press on, trying to find new ways to bring money in when it’s just not there as usual.
“We’re just moving ahead,” Thompson said. “That’s all we can do.”
Difficult to function
Besides a constant stream of improvement projects, what, exactly, does a booster club do?
Caledonia Booster Club president Holly Parker said, “we do it all.”
She and vice president Tammy McCool help fundraise for all the school’s sports programs, help teams afford uniforms, decorate for senior night and various other projects.
Parker said her goal is to encourage participation in athletics. While coaches and their sports rely heavily on the booster club’s actions, it’s all about the athletes, Parker said.
“We want every kid to be able to play a sport, we want every kid to be able to be involved, and we don’t want finances to come in the way,” she said.
But in the past seven months, achieving that hasn’t been easy.
Ticket and concession sales have been roughly cut in half at home football games. Seniors typically sell 50 to 60 parking spots per year to raise money; they’ve only managed to sell 32 this year.
“It’s been quite difficult to still get all the sports everything that they need to still function as a team,” Parker said.
Other schools are feeling the same effects because of the pandemic.
At Starkville High School, football booster club president Marvell Howard said, concessions sales have dropped at least 30 percent. Unable to serve its normal menu — including hot dogs, sausages and hamburgers — the Yellow Jackets have to rely on a limited menu featuring prepackaged food, including Chick-fil-A sandwiches, that is more expensive for the school to purchase.
Andy Riley, booster club president at Oak Hill Academy in West Point, said his school is $4,000 short of its annual expectation of roughly $20,000 in annual revenue, money which goes toward uniforms, painting the football field, reconditioning helmets and more.
Game day sales haven’t been affected much — Oak Hill is a small school and thus wasn’t hitting the 25 percent capacity attendance limit anyway, Riley said, but a lot of the Raiders’ typical sponsors have chosen not to buy signs to advertise their businesses along the fence of the football stadium. What hurt especially, Riley said, was the end of the 2019-20 school year: Oak Hill wasn’t able to hold its sports banquet, which usually brings in substantial donations.
Sharp found himself in a similar situation: this year’s edition of the annual fall fundraiser — often bringing in 50 to 60 percent of the booster club’s revenue — has been delayed indefinitely. Sharp said he’s hoping to hold the fundraiser in the spring and expects to have other fundraising projects later on in the year.
“We’re trying to understand that a lot of people, the pandemic caused them to lose income and lose money, and so that’s put them behind in their personal lives, so maybe they don’t have that extra money to give and to donate this year,” he said.
Sharp said statewide attendance limits — 50 percent for outdoor events since Sept. 30, 25 percent previously — have “killed” tickets and concession sales at home football games, where C.L. Mitchell field is typically full to bursting. Game day income for Heritage Academy has been cut in a third or maybe a fourth, Sharp said.
“I don’t really know that you’ll make that revenue back,” Sharp said.
Stepping up
Despite their losses, booster clubs continue to push hard, and the communities around them are helping to lift them up.
The Caledonia Quick Stop — the Texaco gas station across the street from the school — has fed Caledonia’s football team for free on multiple occasions. Zachary’s Restaurant in Columbus has also helped feed the team, Parker said.
Sharp said while some boosters haven’t been able to donate — the booster club has scaled back its ask for restaurants and other private businesses given their mandatory shutdowns — others have come through.
“There’s plenty of people who always step up at Heritage Academy,” he said. “That’s one thing that that school has is a family-type atmosphere.”
At Oak Hill, it is quite literally family making a difference. Riley said the parents who work the school’s concession stands at football and softball games always show up for their shifts or arrange a substitute if they can’t make it.
“It’s important that they know that their hard work is for a cause, and it helps everybody,” Riley said.
Starkville’s football players have taken it upon themselves to raise money, Howard said. The team created a Snap! Raise fundraiser in which the team puts together a video and each player emails it to at least 20 people in hopes of earning donations. Howard estimated the team has raised around $12,000 that way.
The Jackets’ basketball teams plan to do one, too, according to basketball booster club president Eric Green.
Green said he regretted missing out on the team’s ring ceremony after the Jackets’ boys won the MHSAA Class 6A championship in mark, and the pandemic left no chance to send off graduating seniors on the boys and girls teams.
With attendance-limited home basketball games starting in just a few weeks, Green knows there will be an impact on revenue, though its size remains unclear.
“Right now, we haven’t had the chance to see how it’s going to affect us,” Green said. “We know it’s going to affect us, but we just can’t say how just yet.”
Columbus Municipal School District’s board pitched in to help, too, setting aside $30,000 in a new fund to pay for game day meals for student athletes, coaches and support staff — costs the booster clubs usually shoulder.
The Falcons’ football booster club — with leadership including Thompson, Jackie Metcalf, Tisha Conner, Shanta Flowers and Robena Moody — has tried to make up for losses by adding a concession stand at varsity games in order to make up for what the school lost: the T-shirts they didn’t sell this year; the signs they couldn’t get sponsors to buy.
Thompson said the booster club is optimistic to pay for players to attend spring and summer camps, something Columbus couldn’t do last year.
There’s a familiar aspect, too, for the booster clubs fighting to survive the pandemic. All of the booster club presidents either have children or grandchildren on the teams they support, adding a personal stake. Despite the pandemic’s impact, Thompson, whose son Anthony is a junior on the football team, said she just feels “blessed” so far that football season is still in full swing.
“As long as the boys are still playing and our numbers are going good, we plan to keep going,” Thompson said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 31 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
