PREPNET / SPEAK OUT

Does your school assess extra fees to play sports? How much, and is it a fair amount?

TIM LEE

Laguna Hills, Tennis

We have to buy an ASB sticker, which costs $35, and you have to pay a $125 transportation fee. I don’t understand why we have to buy an ASB sticker. It’s not needed for our sport. To be a spectator on tennis and track, it’s free. So we don’t benefit from it. But I think the transportation fee is fair.

ASHLEY FRICKS

Mission Viejo, Softball

We have a transportation fee for the bus, which varies by sport depending on the need. The fees beyond that really are not the school’s choice, but the individual sport’s choice. I’ve found that it’s very fair, and they do what they can to help people out. I think we paid $85 for transportation, and the program asked for another $100 to pay for warmups and various expenses; $50 of that $100 went for gold cards, which are community discount cards we can sell to the community. That’s one way athletes can earn that money back, and a way that they really have tried to minimize cost for us players.

MICHELLE ICBAN

Cypress, Track

We just pay for our uniforms and that’s it. There is also fund-raising where we go out and sell gold cards, where you get a couple businesses together and put their names on the back of cards and you get discounts there. Recently we started our own car wash for the Cypress track team and we just sold Cinco de Mayo tickets for the Cypress community festival.

KRISTINA HYLLESTED

Rancho Alamitos, Softball

We don’t have any fees at our school. We can play for free, but we have to do fund-raising. This year we did a base-a-thon, where we go out and get sponsors from family members, friends, etc. We run around the softball diamond to see how many bases we can touch in one minute and people either pledge a flat fee or a certain amount per base.

NEXT QUESTION

Should athletes be required to participate in summer practice programs in order to make their high school teams?