Last week, Yelm Community Schools announced major cuts for sports programs, in order to deal with a projected budget shortfall that exceeds more than $8 million.
The district is cutting all high school and middle school C-teams. Those are what’s known as development squads, with mostly freshmen feeding into the JV level, KIRO 7 explained last week.
“I’m talking like one-third of my program is going to be gone and cut and like, and your initial reactions, like, getting punched in the gut,” Yelm High School football coach Jason Ronquillo said last week in an interview on “The John Curley and Jake Skorheim Show” on KIRO Newsradio.
The coach explained to John and Jake what it means to play football in that area and how high are the expectations for those student athletes.
“It’s a right of passage,” Ronquillo said. “These kids are they’ve been playing sports, a lot of them all their lives, you know. And a lot of them, their parents played here, their grandparents may have played here. It’s kind of an expectation in the family household.”
Ronquillo explained that the elimination of those C-teams would impact dozens of potential football players.
“You’re talking about (about 40) kids,” he said. “(I’ve got to) tell 40 some families that they aren’t gonna play in two weeks. Yeah, it’s a tough conversation.”
Adding “it can destroy a program,” Ronquillo explained it is important to get these student athletes into training while they’re young and before the school year begins.
“(You’ve) got to start maturing that young body in the weight room all summer long, all off season,” coach said. “And we go, I’m not saying we go football year round, but we we lift year round. We work out year round. And to say that a third of our programs cut, that’s killer.”
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Even getting athletes to the games will be difficult as the district also cut funding for transportation.
“Basically, if you sign up for athletics and you make the team, that family is responsible for getting their athletes to and from those athletic events,” Ronquillo said to KIRO 7.
Ronquillo and another parent came with a game plan as co-founders of regional youth sports organization Total Sports Development (TSD). They established a fundraiser and posted it on the TSD website to raise money to help save the district’s C-team sports. Those interested in making a donation can head to the TSD website and give whatever amount of money they can to help.
The original goal was to raise $50,000 by Wednesday. Remarkably, the donations blew past that $50,000 goal between 3 and 4 p.m. Wednesday. The current total raised as of 4 p.m. Wednesday is $64,558.
The fundraiser hit that number shortly after former Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, a five-time national champion, appeared on “The John and Jake Show” Wednesday afternoon.
Steve Coogan is the lead editor of MyNorthwest. You can read more of his stories here. Follow Steve on X, or email him here.