Name of the Game Is Bingo : Budgets: For some schools, fund-raisers are the only way to keep sports programs alive.

Brother, can you spare a dime?

How about 50 bucks?

Your local high school’s athletic department could use a little spare change. How about dropping a few clams at a car wash? Bingo game? Pancake breakfast? Golf tournament?

How about dropping by to see the Lakers’ A.C. Green speak? Admission last week at Newport Harbor High School was $5 for students, $7 for adults.

Money is tight everywhere these days, especially when it comes to fielding high school athletic teams. The art of the fund-raiser has become an important part of coaching high school sports.

For some schools, fund-raising is the only way to keep sports programs alive. Edison, for example, gets all its money from fund-raising.

“I haven’t bought a ball or bat for a team (with school district money) in 10 years,” Edison Athletic Director Lyman Clower said.

Others raise money on a need basis--perhaps for new uniforms, or even a stadium.

Many coaches and athletic directors say you can’t win without effective fund-raising. Sometimes an active booster club is more valuable than a 7-foot center with a smooth jumper.

Most high school districts in Orange County have a tough enough time supplying the essentials. Often there is barely enough money for new football helmets, shoulder pads, diving boards or hurdles for the track and field team.

And if a school wants uniforms with names on the backs, a new baseball diamond, a new scoreboard for the gym, new weights--the extras so many seem bent on having these days--someone else has to foot the bill.

More often than not, it’s up to the individual high schools to come up with the money.

Some schools put on car washes, rummage sales, golf tournaments, jogathons and candy sales. Others stick with bingo. In some cases, the amount raised is staggering, but coaches say they need every penny to survive.

The work is time-consuming, and most say they’d rather not have to do it. But they know it has to be done.

“I hate going around beating on doors selling candy,” said Tim Devaney, Sunny Hills High School football coach.

Instead of selling, Sunny Hills has turned to a golf tournament to raise money for its athletic department.

It has proved to be the easiest way for the school to keep its teams on the field.

It is by no means the only way.

BINGO

Bingo is by far the biggest money-maker. If you need big bucks, you turn to that.

The Saturday night bingo game at Dana Hills rakes in about $47,000 a year, according to Athletic Director John Klink. The money is divided evenly among the school’s athletic teams and its band.

In the 12 years since Dana Hills started its game, bingo has paid for a 3,300-seat football stadium, for the new football uniforms with “The Point” printed on the sleeves and for new footballs and basketballs.

“It’s the largest, most consistent fund-raiser,” Klink said. “We’d be between a rock and a hard place without it. It’s got us through the tough times and some affluent times, which have come and gone. Funding (from the school district) is pretty slim. Therefore, bingo is playing a very important part in our future.”

Klink will spend eight Saturdays a year working bingo nights on the athletic department’s rotating schedule.

He said the school is always looking for ways to improve the game to ensure a loyal following each Saturday. Competition between schools’ bingo games is often fierce, so they have promotions. Dana Hills has turkey giveaways at Thanksgiving, pie giveaways at Christmas and weekly $200 door prizes.

Still, Klink said attendance has dropped 20%, largely because of games at other high schools.

Dana Hills’ minimum buy-in is $18. At Edison, where the school’s bingo game has been going strong on Monday nights since 1985, it’s $15.

The yearly take at Edison is $25,000, according to Clower, Edison’s athletic director.

“We’re getting to the point where we couldn’t afford anything (without bingo),” Clower said.

Edison’s financial situation was dire when the school began bingo. Enrollment was down and the school wasn’t attracting 10,000 fans to its football games the way it once had.

“Everything got so expensive,” Clower said. “Everything was going downhill fast. You can only sell so much candy, so many ribbons. With bingo, the kids don’t have to do that junk. That’s a plus.”

The coach of each Edison sport turns in a budget to Clower, who decides how to distribute the bingo money. Usually, he said, the teams’ budgets are met without problems.

Edison’s game has become so successful that the athletic department has little to do with its weekly operation.

“It’s all in the booster clubs,” said Clower, who used to shuttle customers in a custodian’s motorized cart from the parking lot to the game room in the cafeteria.

“I probably haven’t been to a game in more than a year.”

SH

FORE!

“We don’t have a cafeteria,” said Gary Meek, Esperanza’s football coach. “Our kids eat outside. We have no place to hold bingo. We’d love to have it, because we wouldn’t have to do those other things.”

Esperanza puts on a number of fund-raisers, but one of the most successful is its annual golf tournament.

Sponsored by the football booster club, the fourth tournament will be Nov. 12 at Alta Vista Country Club.

For a $100 entry fee, you get 18 holes of golf, an “attractive” golf shirt and dinner. You or your company also can sponsor a tee for $100 (gold) or $500 (platinum) more.

A flier reads: “The Boosters invite you to participate and support the 4th Annual Golf Tournament, which plays a vital role in Esperanza’s fund-raiser programs.”

Indeed. The football program is in the process of buying video equipment--a $25,000 purchase when completed. The Placentia Unified School District will pay stipends for eight football coaches; the Aztecs’ have 12 on their staff. The weight room has $20,000 worth of weights.

The money has to come from somewhere, Meek said.

“(Fund-raising) is a year-round thing,” he said. “It’s never off your mind. Something is always in the works.”

Sunny Hills also has turned to a golf tournament as its major fund-raiser.

“I know we made about $15,000 last year,” said Devaney, the school’s football coach. “That money goes around. We put in new backboards and a new scoreboard in the gym. We got new weight equipment out of it.”

COACH AS A SALESMAN

Bill Ross has coached at Santa Ana since 1958. For years, he sold candy. As baseball coach, he sold ads on the outfield fence to local businesses, charging $250 for a new advertiser, $150 a year after that.

“It’s one of those things, personally, I don’t like to do,” Ross said. “But in order to have some of the things we needed to have, I did it.”

Unlike some school districts, Santa Ana Unified benefits from increased enrollment. It has enough to buy the essentials, but if teams want more, they have to raise it on their own.

So the athletic department is organizing a golf tournament for the spring. Santa Ana, Foothill and Century recently teamed with a Santa Ana car dealership for a pancake breakfast. And Santa Ana also has looked into starting a bingo game.

But fund-raising is a tough sell in Santa Ana, Ross said. There are enough businesses such as the car dealership that contribute. But the school’s students generally do not come from the county’s more affluent families.

“It’s tougher for the kids to get the money,” Ross said. “We don’t have large booster clubs. Many of our parents are working, and many don’t speak English.

“Your kids see the uniforms and bat bags and these other things other schools have, and they say ‘we’d like these things, too.’ So you . . . raise all you can.”