With little to no funding from the district and the school, the question is, how do South High sports and clubs make money? South High has a wide array of sports and clubs. These organizations play games, host different events, buy t-shirts and uniforms, and make South High one of the top schools in the city, but for these organizations run to properly, they need money.

The Quiz Bowl and Knowledge Bowl are two clubs at South where students compete against other schools with trivia questions. The Quiz Bowl and the Knowledge Bowl have to make their members pay $30 dollars in order to participate, according to Captain Cooper Johnson. Their expenses include busing the members to and from competitions.

“They are both separate South High teams but we only have resources to support one of the teams,” said Johnson. Doug Berglund, who is the Quiz Bowl and Knowledge Bowl adviser, has even had to sell juice to make ends meet,“100% of the profits go toward Quiz Bowl and Knowledge Bowl.”

The National Honor Society (NHS) hosts events such as the Sadie Hawkins’ dance and the Talent Show. NHS also gives grants to various teachers and organizations at South. When asked what would happen if the Sadie Hawkins’ dance or Talent Show was cancelled, NHS Treasurer Mitchell Erickson said, “it would put a dent in our account.”

South High’s Debate Team has been nationally recognized for their talent. They compete with other schools around the metro area.  Debate Captain Izak Gallini-Matyas said they are mostly funded by the Urban Debate League. The Urban Debate League is a group of law firms that gives money to urban schools that have debate programs. According to Gallini-Matyas, the Debate team has an estimated $8,000 dollars in its budget.

According to Athletic Director Mark Sanders, funding from the district is limited, “funding has never been much…I’ll spend the the money we get in the first 2 months.” For men’s and women’s sports, South High receives about $22,000 dollars from the district, which spends about a quarter of 1% of its budget on all sports in the district.

So with costs such as transportation and uniforms, how does the athletics department at South handle all the sports year round? “The rest of our budget comes from concessions at the games and players have to pay participation fees in order to play,” said Sanders.

The budget that the school district has for sports has not changed in at least 12 years. “The budget is the same but the cost of everything varies significantly,” stated Sanders. Even with little money given to the sports teams, Sanders is still happy with the athletic program today, “I’m pretty proud, I raised enough money to build the dance studio.”