Photo courtesy of Joel Kurtzman
Picture this: It’s the Marin County Athletic League (MCAL) boys basketball championship game. You walk into the gym and the energy hits you like a wave. The student section, color coded in black and red, radiates heat as you step closer. You force yourself through the seniors and towards the back, almost stepping on your own feet as you squeeze by. The bleachers are packed so tightly you can feel every move from the person next to you. Suddenly, the crowd erupts and the basketball team runs out in perfectly coordinated outfits. Matching shoes, matching warm-up jerseys, every detail dialed in. Every component says the same thing: They are taken care of. Now picture a different team of a different sport at the same school. Their games are nearly empty, with only a handful of parents scattered through the stands. When the team walks out of their pre-game meeting, you don’t see coordinated warm-ups or matching gear. Instead, you see mismatched shoes and a faded assortment of jerseys that make them look like strangers thrown together rather than one united team. It’s not because they’re short on talent or effort; they are short on money. The team has the bare essentials, enough to compete, but not enough to feel truly supported. While the basics may be enough for a team to thrive, it’s the extras that make them look and feel respected and appreciated. Unfortunately, this picture is reality. Fixing this gap is about more than extra warm-up gear; it’s about money, history and a fundraising structure that quietly advantages some teams over others before a single game is ever played.
How the money works
To understand the disparity, first, it’s important to understand how Redwood’s athletics get funded, because it isn’t simple. There are three main layers. The Tamalpais Union High School District (TUHSD) provides a base budget covering coaches salaries, basic equipment, uniforms and transportation. On top of that, the Redwood High School Foundation, a 501(3)(c) nonprofit supported by parent donations, provides additional resources across all programs, academics and athletics. Sitting between the Foundation and Athletic Department bridging them together, is Benchwarmers, a committee made up of parents which decides how money from the Foundation gets distributed fairly across all sports. Benchwarmers president Shyla Hendrickson is tasked with organizing funds donated to the Foundation across all sports. “What Benchwarmers does is it takes donation money from the Foundation and allocates it to sports,” Hendrickson said. “So, if a team needs new equipment, balls, uniforms or anything that supports the athletics, then that will come from Benchwarmers.” The result, according to Principal Dr. Barnaby Payne, is an athletic program most California public schools struggle to match. “Compared to most public schools in the state, our athletics are pretty well funded in terms of everything from uniforms to facilities to the ability to travel,” Payne said. But that system, as generous as it is, only tells part of the story.
The three foundations
Layered on top of the TUHSD and Foundation funding are three sport-specific 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations: Pigskins, supporting football and cheer; the Dugout Club, supporting baseball; and the Hoops Club, supporting basketball. Each raises its own money independently, through parent donations, merch sales and fundraising events. President Greg Vaugn of the Pigskin Club explains that the cost of running a football program justifies the need for its own foundation. In a written statement, the club made it especially clear to highlight the size of the program with roughly 130 athletes from the freshman and varsity levels. “Football is very gear intensive which adds costs to run the program. For example, every season, every helmet must be recertified to pass a safety level of standards,” the statement read. In recent years, the club had additionally purchased halos, a protective padding around helmets to reduce the risk of head injuries. TUHSD sports-specific 501(c)(3)s help fund and support their specific teams, leaving a lingering question: why are there only three? These organizations didn’t appear overnight. They have been “grandfathered in,” meaning these sport-specific 501(3)(c)s were established long before the TUHSD wrote its current rules surrounding sport-specific foundations, which means they’re permitted to keep operating in a way no new organization can. No sport starting a booster club today could gain the same independent fundraising status, making these three a financial advantage that is effectively frozen in time. “[The foundations were created] a long time ago, long before I was ever at Redwood,” Hendrickson said. “They don’t allow any new athletic team foundations. We did look into it specifically for volleyball, and it’s now a rule that there’s no new foundations.” However, this information Hendrickson received in the attempt to form a volleyball sport specific 501(3)(c) is not necessarily correct. The district hasn’t banned the creation of new foundations; they’ve just made it nearly impossible to get approved. According to Corbett Elsen, the TUHSD Assistant Superintendent of Business and Operations, a sports team that doesn’t currently have an affiliated sport specific 501(3)(c) can apply to create one. “We don’t have a hard policy against it. Someone can ask to submit a request, it goes per the board’s policy to the principal. The principal would have to review it and authorize it or not.” Elsen said. The process of 501(3)(c) approval doesn’t stop there. If the principal authorizes this request, the application moves forward. “It would have to come to the board to be authorized or not. Every other year, all groups have to resubmit their application to reaffirm the principal,” Elsen said. If sports without an affiliated 501(3)(c) are being denied attempts to establish their own sport-specific 501(3)(c) entities, why do previously established 501(3)(c)s get reapproved every two years? This question raised goes deeper than just pure rejection.
The desire for less 501(3)(c)s
The denial of the approval for a volleyball foundation came from a desire within the TUHSD board to reduce the amount of separate sport-specific 501(3)(c)s. “We would really hesitate to add any more 501(c)(3)s at Redwood because [we like] this idea of one donation to one organization: The Redwood High School Foundation,” Payne said. The thinking is straightforward: the more separate fundraising organizations there are, the harder it becomes to track where money is going–and the more confusing it gets for parents who are being pulled in every direction. Executive Director of Redwood High School Foundation Rebecca Caspersen describes what that pressure can look like from a parent’s point of view. “They don’t want parents to be nickel and dimed. All these ‘give $10 here,’ ‘$100 here’ or ‘$200 here’ makes it a little overwhelming,” Caspersen said. The goal appears to be one consolidated foundation, one donation and one clear place for money to go.
What the money buys and who gets it
The practical difference between having a 501(c)(3) and not having one shows up not in basics, but in extras. The TUHSD guarantees every team coaches, uniforms and equipment. What it doesn’t provide is team dinners, matching practice gear, tournament travel or the kind of visible investment that signals to a team that they matter. Junior Logan Leverte has seen the disparity up close; having played both varsity volleyball and basketball, she knows firsthand how differently sports can be resourced. “We’d sell basketball coupon cards around the neighborhood. That’s all it took to get shoes, multiple sweatshirts, sweatpants and warm-up shirts funded for us,” Leverte said. Volleyball was a different story. “We paid for almost everything out of pocket, and whatever we didn't have to pay for, we had to return to the school at the end of the season. We ended up with mismatched warm-up shirts, looking less put-together than the teams we were playing against,” Leverte said. Corbett Elsen acknowledged the reality behind this, explaining how the foundation funds the basics, but the nice extra gear is where the inequity becomes visible. “If every other group has [a 501(c)(3)] that your club doesn’t, you may not have as many extras. The foundation will take care of the basics, but [not] the nice-to-have extras – that's the con of having different groups,” Elsen said. Transportation is another area where this gap becomes concrete. The Pigskin Club uses their collected donations to charter football buses to away games, a luxury the TUHSD does not sponsor. “If the freshman football team has a Thursday 4 p.m. game in Livermore, it would likely require about a 15 parent carpool,” the Pigskin provided statement read. “This would require a lot of organization, potentially risking players not having a ride, plus, parents are relieved to not have to leave work or other family obligations to drive to the game." This is an example of what teams without a 501(3)(c) are left to figure out on their own.
Photo: Boys varsity football stands proud for the pre-game national anthem, holding helmets provided by the Pigskin Foundation. (Photo courtesy of Joel Kurtzman)
The Accountability Gap
Having three separate nonprofits sounds organized on paper, but it actually creates a lesser-known problem: accountability. When money is split across multiple independent organizations, it becomes difficult to track, and easy for money to slip through the cracks. When parents donate to the Foundation, the trail is clear. Every donation is logged, reviewed and disbursed through a single check. The same clarity doesn’t always exist for the disconnected school organizations. Payne described a scenario that, while hypothetical, isn’t far-fetched. “You have a school-affiliated nonprofit, the flag football club, and there’s turnover, and there’s a loss of leadership transition. There may be money sitting in an account somewhere that was deposited five years ago, and the current students and families don’t even know it’s there because somebody left the school, nobody turned over the information,” Payne said. “If a parent gives a dime, we want to make sure that we’re able to say where that dime went.” To address this issue, Elsen and help from other TUHSD staff crafted guidelines in effort to solve this problem: The District’s Funding Guidelines for School-Connected Organizations. These guidelines address money tracking visibility directly, stating that “A brief budget should be created including these allowable expenditures aligned to and justifying the optional family donation. This team budget shall be made available to all team parents, coaches, AD and administration.” In other words, each 501(3)(c) is required to publish a simple budget showing parents exactly what their donation will pay for. This is to ensure transparency so no family is left wondering where their money went. Other requirements included in the guidelines are where the money cannot be spent, listed in bullet points. Some examples include custom practice wear that is kept by students, food or team dinners, swag--items kept by team members, senior celebrations, banquets and coaches gifts. The money fundraised by the 501(c)(3) also cannot pay for coaches salaries. The guidelines are a step in the right direction, but they only go so far. With money still spread across multiple independent organizations, each operating on its own timeline and leadership structure, full transparency remains difficult to achieve in practice. Consolidating donations through the Foundation would make accountability far simpler. For now, even with the rules in place, it can still be hard to know exactly where the money ends up.
Beyond the money
Although money plays a central role in the disparity between teams, the inequality isn’t always measured in dollars. It shows up in practice schedules, field access, conditions and overall opportunities each team is given, or prevented from. Senior Saki Beattie, defensive captain of this year’s inaugural girls varsity flag football team, quickly became aware of the difference in treatment status between genders. "That there was a very big difference, specifically for men's [tackle] football and women's flag football. The men’s football [team] got priority in terms of scheduling for their practices. They definitely had nicer gear than us,” Beattie said. This gap in gender equality became especially noticeable during the women’s flag football’s daily practices. The team often found themselves moving locations to accommodate the men's team. “We were moved around a lot. We were in the back field with geese poop, and it was really easy to roll your ankle. There wasn’t nearly enough room even with just us on it, but they had another middle school team on it. It really felt like we were just kind of shoved to a corner,” Beattie said. However, the women’s team didn't stay silent. Together, the players drafted a letter to Assistant Principal Lisa Kemp and Athletic Director Jessica Peish to voice their frustration. When we reached out to Peish for comment, she declined our interview and directed us to Dr. Payne. The Pigskin Club did extend one gesture to the new women's flag football program by inviting players to participate in a home halftime event last season, but a halftime appearance was far from equal treatment. The resource gap doesn’t stop at gear and field access, it extends to something harder to quantify: who shows up to watch. The girls varsity basketball is a powerhouse of a sports team, recently making history this past season by winning their second North Coast Section (NCS) Championship title moving them up to the Division I, for the first time ever. Yet, even historical seasons can’t fill the stands. Parent and co-president of the Hoops Club Scott Petersmeyer sees the difference in support from a parent and president perspective. “We have state tournament games where there's pretty much only parents in the stands. When there's a boys game and a girls game back to back, people only really show up towards the end of the girls game because they’re there for the boys game, and that's frustrating and challenging,” Petersmeyer said. Even at a school as well funded as Redwood, the gap between who gets resources and recognition often comes down to the same quiet imbalance, so why are we subjecting our women’s teams to it?
Where improvement can be made
Redwood isn’t the only school in the TUHSD juggling these questions. But according to Elsen, it may be the one struggling with them most visibly. “Archie’s the most consolidated. Tam’s in the middle,” Elsen said. “Redwood has made progress, but still has many more individual groups.” At Archie Williams, a single foundation covers everything—athletics, drama, music, donations—under one big umbrella. Tamalpais has been moving in the same direction. Redwood, on the other hand, has accumulated foundation upon foundation over decades, creating a structure that even the people running it find difficult to navigate. “What we’ve heard from parents is that it can be very confusing,” Elsen said. Elsen’s solution is consolidation, not elimination. “We highly encourage as many of these smaller team groups to fold into the larger foundation to coordinate as best as possible,” Elsen said. However, he clarified this thinking as encouragement, not a policy. “We can’t force a lot. Some have still really wanted to hold on to their identity and separateness, which is fine, but there’s pros and cons to that as well,” Elsen said. Without a harder line, the gap between teams with independent foundations and those without one will persist. “While a group may have it, another group may not. That doesn’t mean that other groups may not receive support from the larger booster club or the foundations, but it doesn’t guarantee it,” Elsen said.
What's next?
This raises issues that go beyond any single sport or season. Should every team have access to its own booster? Should fundraising be centralized so that money is shared across programs? Should the school step in to regulate how independently raised funds are distributed? What’s also worth considering is why other schools are more consolidated and what Redwood can do to get to that spot. Those questions don’t have easy answers, but they’re worth asking. A system where your resources depend on history and organizational structure rather than athletic merit isn’t just unequal, it’s invisible.
Credits:
Elizabeth Hopkins and Annalise Horn