Gas squeeze at pumps takes its toll on sports teams, fans

Kids love to play sports, and parents want to be at every game.

High schools field roughly a dozen teams, and alumni want to attend.

There are year-round travel teams, summer leagues and camps, and athletes want to be part of the experience.

But with the price of fuel increasing to around $4 a gallon for gasoline and nearly $5 for diesel, the sports community is starting to feel the strain from all sides.

School principals and coaches have budgets to stay within. For the first time, some must take the distance of away games into consideration before making season schedules.

The allotment for extracurricular activities transportation in Terrebonne Parish public schools has not increased since the 2005-06 school year.

The proposed 2008-09 Terrebonne Parish school budget has almost $950,000 designated for transportation costs. None of that is specifically for school athletic teams.

“We give each school an allotment for transportation involving all extracurricular activities,” said Harris Henry, executive director of finances and auxiliary services for the Terrebonne Parish School Board.

The allotment amounts have remained the same the last three years, even though the price of diesel has doubled.

The proposed allotments for next year will also remain unchanged: South Terrebonne and Ellender Memorial high schools, $25,000; Terrebonne and H.L. Bourgeois high schools, $20,000; Evergreen Middle and Houma junior high schools, $5,000; Lacache, Montegut, Oaklawn and Grand Caillou middle schools, $1,500.

If schools spend less than they are allotted, and most have in previous years, the extra money can be rolled over to the following year. If they spend over their limit, the school must reimburse the board.

In the 2006-07 year, the last full year records are available, only Bourgeois (by $89) and Ellender (by $5,318) overspent.

“A budget is just an estimate,” Henry said. “Do we have enough money for fuel in the budget? Probably not. But we’ll make adjustments to the budget around October or November and again around February.”

When asked if the allotments had been adjusted in years past, he said, “No.”

The school board pays all transportation costs when a team makes the state playoffs.

The board is contracted with Fuelman to keep diesel costs to a minimum.

“We pay four cents above the OPIS (Oil Price Information Service) world market rack rate,” said Henry, “which is cheaper than you can get at the pump.”

The last fuel billing on June 15 shows the board paid $4.38 per gallon of diesel, roughly 40 cents a gallon less than regular consumers paid.

There are no immediate plans for the board to increase the allotments and Henry does not believe it will take drastic actions to reduce costs.

“(The school board is) not going to cut into the transportation budget,” he declared. “They may curtail it a little, but it’s not like they are going to make those kids walk to the playoff games.”

Winning six state championships last school year will not help Vandebilt Catholic High School principal James Reiss cope with constraining the athletic budget.

Vandebilt’s 2008-09 school budget was set in January when the cost of fuel was about $2.90 a gallon for gas and $3.50 a gallon for diesel.

The unexpected fast rise in fuel prices has Reiss and his peers looking for ways to raise funds, cut costs, or both.

“You can’t run a school in the hole,” he said. “We can only guesstimate how much more it’s going to cost. Where’s that extra money going to come from?”

Morgan City High School principal Mickey Fabre is in the same boat, but says his waters are not as rough.

“Morgan City, at this point, is in good shape,” he said. “If the cost of fuel goes up another 50 cents to $1 soon, I won’t be saying that.”

Both schools, along with Ellender, compete in district 8-4A with Shaw, Belle Chasse and Helen Cox. That means road trips to New Orleans for away games are regular.

“Let’s say we’re going 80 miles one-way,” Fabre supposed. “That’s 160 miles, and we’re lucky if these buses get eight to 10 miles to the gallon.”

One advantage Morgan City and Vandebilt have is owning their buses. And Vandebilt has found another extra money-saving feature.

“One of our requirements for new coaches is that they get CDLs (Commercial Driver’s Licenses) so they can drive buses, so we can save money on hiring bus drivers,” said Walter Dupre, Vandebilt assistant principal and head football coach.

In the past, both schools have let their varsity teams travel ample distances for competitive non-district regular season games. That may be one of the first sacrifices made.

Other options are keeping all junior varsity and freshmen squads closer to home, and limiting the number of athletes that travel with the team.

“Instead of taking two or three buses, we may take just one,” said Reiss.

Booster clubs have been valuable assets for both schools in fundraising. They will be counted on even more if fuel prices continue their recent upsurge.

“Our booster club (Tiger Athletic Foundation) meets periodically throughout the year and assesses the needs of our athletic team,” said Fabre “Our booster club has been great to us.”

“I want to get the Terrier Club to help us out,” Reiss declared, “to do something like a chicken dinner, barbecue, catfish dinner or something like that to raise the extra money for travel.”

But schools aren’t the only one’s feeling the gas strain, parents of athletes are feeling it too.

At 4:30 a.m. on any weekday across the Tri-parishes, alarms go off and lights go on.

Within the half-hour, sport utility vehicles hit the highways from Cut Off, Chauvin, Larose, Vacherie, Morgan City and points in-between heading to the Ellendale Country Club pool. The Bayou Barracudas have swim practice at 6 a.m.

Carpools arrive three, four, five children deep.

“I’m glad I don’t have to do this every morning,” said Kim Cheramie, whose turn it was to carpool a party of five from Cut Off.

On this Thursday, it was her son Cameron, brothers Elie and Alex McRae, Nicholas Guidry and Devon Gallian making the hour-long drive in her Cadillac Escalade.

At 14 miles per gallon, the trip cost about $9 each way.

“I just put $45 in the tank, and I’ll have to fill up again soon,” she said.

Cheramie is one in a group of five parents in Cut Off who share carpool duty once a week.

Besides being on the Barracudas swim team year-round, the young swimmers are on the Cut Off Hurricanes summer league team. Traveling to all the meets gets costly.

“Swimming is an expensive sport to do,” said Dave McRae, father of Elie, Alex and Matthew. “Not only do you have to travel everyday to Houma, you feed them on the road. At least monthly, you’re traveling to a meet out-of-town, whether it’s Baton Rouge (this past Friday) or New Orleans. We’ve been to Mississippi, California, Alabama, Texas, all over the country to race. I would say on average it costs a year-round (Barracudas) family probably about $500 a month to swim.”

Dondi Clement would feel fortunate to only spend that much.

“I read my bank statement last month and between going from work to the school (E.D. White) to the Swampland games and travel league games, I paid like $1,000 just for gas,” he said.

But Clement feels the rewards may outweigh the obvious costs.

“You only get one chance in a lifetime to be with your kids,” explained Dondi Clement, an assistant baseball coach for son Rhett’s 12-and-under travel baseball team. “So you’ve got to take advantage of it no matter the costs.”

The father of two, Jacob, 15, and Rhett, 12, has been an assistant baseball coach for his sons’ travel baseball teams off-and-on for about eight years.

Currently, Rhett is on the Louisiana Diamond Jaxx USSSA 12-and-under AAA baseball team. Things have changed since Dondi Clement coached Jacob on the same squad.

“When Jacob started playing travel baseball we played maybe once a month or so, but since Rhett has started traveling we have been playing almost every weekend,” he said.

This season, which started in November, Clement and the team has driven to League City, Texas, St. Francisville, Lake Charles, Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

“In previous years, we have gone all the way to St. Louis and we flew to Kansas City,” he said.

Because Clement is an assistant, he has to pay expenses out of his pocket. Next week, the team will participate in a tournament in Cooperstown, N.Y., to conclude the season.

Clement expects to spend $3,500 on the trip only. By the time the season ends, he estimates he will have spent $6,000 on team-related expenses.

“It hasn’t affected me yet. I’m lucky enough to have a well-paying job,” said the computer system analyst for SI International in Metairie. “But from time to time, it can get costly. Maybe in the near future, it will start to take a toll.”

There is a general consensus that if fuel prices stay about where they are right now, budgets (school and family) will be OK. That is a triumph of hope over recent experience.