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First Posted: 1/8/2014
Yes, varsity football is by far the costliest sport in local public schools, according to new data released under a 2012 state law, and that’s hardly a surprise to anyone familiar with the high cost of gear, transportation and staffing for a game.
But if you drill deeper into the data, football is dirt cheap compared to — of all things — bowling.
Calculate the cost of a sport per participant, then divide that cost by the number of competitions played, and you get a very different picture.
The participant data in the reports had reliability and consistency issues, so full comparisons are not advisable, but one thing stands out far enough to overpower the statistical concerns: Bowling costs a fortune per participant per game.
Hazleton Area is the lone Luzerne County district to have interscholastic bowling, and the numbers are sparse: five boys and eight girls on the varsity squads, and four boys and four girls on the junior varsity squads.
The data in the district’s athletic disclosure report only listed spending for boys and girls varsity, but Athletic Director Fred Barletta said the JV bowlers participate in the same competitions and the costs for varsity include costs for junior varsity.
Statistical oddities
In fact, the district’s decision to list costs only for varsity demonstrates why the team membership numbers in the reports are problematic. Crunching the numbers straight from the report, boys varsity bowling cost a total of $8,082 for $1,616 per participant. Divide that by eight competitions and taxpayers were spending $202 per participant per game.
Adding the four junior varsity players to the equation cuts that dramatically, to $112 per participant per competition. The total spent on girls bowling is the same, $8,082, but thanks to the higher number of team members, cost per participant per competition drops to $84.
But that’s still a lot of money. The next most expensive sport in Luzerne County schools when measured this way: Boys junior varsity golf, $26.55.
Boys varsity football is a comparative bargain at $10.66 per participant per game.
The breakdown for Hazleton Area bowling costs is the same for boys and girls, and the highest ticket category is “other”: $3,103 each for boys and girls. That’s 38 percent of total spending, in a county where, overall, “other” accounts for 14 percent of total sports spending.
Barletta said the high cost stems partly from the lack of other area districts with teams. The team often must travel beyond a 60-mile radius for competitions, and district policy “allows for meal considerations for any team” exceeding that radius. Policy also allows meals for “competing in a tournament that last more than six hours.”
Two-day event
Barletta noted the costs include two tournaments along with the eight regular-season contests, and food and lodging for the two-day Eastern Pennsylvania Regional Championships.
Which points out another flaw in the state’s reporting form: The Hazleton Area Report gave the total season competitions as required, but did not include tournaments, which would drive down the cost per participant per game further. And there is no distinction between a game played across town or across state.
“The athlete/cost ratio is a result of bowling having a lower number of participants compared to most other sports,” Barletta wrote in an email, “and the factor that to accommodate a schedule of games is more costly then the other sports who participate for the majority of their schedule within a 50-mile radius in the Wyoming Valley Conference.”