Multimedia Reporting (Adler-Utsler)

Ottawa University women’s basketball coach Bruce Tate sits in his office at 5:00 on a Friday afternoon.

And while Tate isn’t strategizing how the Lady Braves can improve their defense for the upcoming season or what their next practice will focus on, he’s working on something equally as important. He is planning for one of his team’s many fundraisers that will take place the next day when they will sell programs and t-shirts at Ottawa’s first home football game.

“We do a lot of different fundraisers,” Tate said. “It’s a goal for every athletics department to get stuff paid for without it coming out of your team’s budget.”

Tate and all of his players participate in concentrated fundraising events to defray the high costs associated with supporting a collegiate athletic team. Tate, also the assistant athletics director at Ottawa, said that each of the college’s thirteen sport teams uses fundraisers and they add up to $25,000 per year for each team.

The game plan for receiving additional cash is not exclusive to Ottawa. The trend of raising money through fundraisers is sweeping the nation. At least four colleges in the vicinity of Lawrence use the method.

“The majority of our athletic programs use outside fund raising projects to help supplement their team budgets,” Baker University Sports Information Director Jerod Kruse said.

Baker and Ottawa Universities are part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, an athletics association for the country’s smaller schools. But that that doesn’t mean the fundraising movement is only found at universities with fewer students.

According to the New York Times, major collegiate athletic departments are also implementing fundraising events for its non-revenue sports. Across the country, from Penn State University to the University of Utah, non-revenue squads are generating extra cash with activities ranging from cleaning football stadiums to holding bake sales.

The Ottawa athletic department reported a grand total of more than $2 million in revenues last year. The number, of course, is far from the revenue Division 1-A colleges bring in during a fiscal year. Nearby Division 1-A school, the University of Kansas, earned a grand total in revenues that exceeded Ottawa’s measly figure by more than $60 million, according to the U.S. Department of Education. But both athletic departments share something in common: its non-revenue sports out-number its revenue sports.

Only football and men’s basketball made money for the University of Kansas last year. The two sports combined revenue of nearly $23 million easily cancelled out the money the other twelve teams lost. The numbers are similar at other major colleges, which has driven those schools to require the programs losing the most money to hold fundraisers.

But the University of Kansas has not held any fundraisers for its athletic teams. Sports with the highest expenses and smallest revenues like the rowing team, swimming and diving team, and track and field team have never held fundraisers in Lawrence.

“We don’t really use fundraisers except for the Kansas Relays,” KU Track & Field Administrative Assistant Debbie Luman said. “But that’s not to say we wouldn’t do one in the future.”

One person that wouldn’t be surprised to see Kansas jump onto the fundraising bandwagon is Bruce Tate. He said that the sheer economics of athletics have gotten to a point where fundraisers are unavoidable – even for major state universities.

“Some of the stuff coaches want eat up a good percentage of an operational budget,” Tate said. “Some administrators don’t see things like new practice jerseys or shoes as a necessity, you just have to hold fundraisers to get money for your program now.”

It’s also become easier than ever to start the fundraising process for a program. Instead of starting at the grassroots level, organizing events and promoting them, at least one Kansas City area company allows teams to skip those steps.

Crowd Systems provides entire staffs to work at everything from concerts, festivals and Kansas City professional sports games. The company is helpful in hiring college teams as employees and giving them opportunities to raise an excessive amount of money in just one day. Tate said Ottawa often went through Crowd Systems and that it provided benefits other than just monetary ones.

“The Royals and Chiefs games, it’s just going through such a hectic day and getting money at the same time,” he said. “It’s a good team-building activity and shows an athlete a way to earn the things they are enjoying in athletics.”

The activities can do more than just improve team camaraderie and allow coaches to buy simple necessities like shoes, though. At Ottawa, the women’s basketball team takes a trip every other year to play in a tournament largely financed by its fundraisers.

These tournaments aren’t in Pittsburg, either. The locations the Lady Braves descended upon in the past include Las Vegas, the Virgin Islands, and the Bahamas. Tate said the cost would be around $1,500 per player but is minimized by the school’s dedication to fundraising. He also said the ability to impress potential recruits with a promise of a basketball vacation makes a difference that would be too valuable to forfeit by cutting fundraising programs.

But not every athletic department using the route of fundraising to get extra money is planning on keeping it that way. Every team at Park University in Parkville, Mo., held fundraisers in past years to help with things like equipment costs. However, Athletic Director Claude English recently developed a booster club in hopes that it will bring support through contributions.

“We’re in the very ground level stages right now with our formal support organization, the Pirate Club,” Park Sports Information Director Steve Wilson said. “Our teams do fundraise on the team level to supplement their budgets but the Pirate Club should really get the fundraising efforts off of the ground.”

With luxurious trips, recruiting advantages and not having to worry about a team’s budget hanging in the balance, it’s clear that fundraisers in collegiate athletics are here to stay. The only question now is how many more universities will begin to rely on the technique.

When Kelli Wurfel, a 20-year old University of Kansas student, travels to Kansas City via K-10 highway she doesn’t have to worry about much.
Wurfel uses the route frequently throughout the year. She drives to Kansas City to visit her sister, to go shopping or to surprise friends at Johnson County Community College. Wurfel said traffic on the highway is minimal.
“Usually, it’s not that bad except during rush hour. I haven’t had too much trouble getting to wherever I’ve needed to go,” Wurfel said. “As more people begin to drive, I can see how it could become more crowded.”
Wurfel’s sentiments on the issue nearly mirror those of the Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Committee. A subdivision within the planning committee, the Transportation 2030 committee, has devoted itself to identifying and addressing the transportation problems that loom in Lawrence’s future.
The committee concerns itself particularly with Lawrence’s own streets quickly becoming too small to handle increased traffic congestion and how to fix it long-term. But it also pays close attention to the long-term traffic problems in commuting to Kansas City from Lawrence.

According to the Planning Committee, the Lawrence population will increase by 74 percent in the next 20 years. The growing community mingled with the continued expansion of Johnson County will cause more difficulties for drivers traveling between the two locations.
“There’s a trend in the past few years that there are more commuters coming out of Lawrence and even more people commuting in,” Transportation 2030 Committee Head Anson Gock said. “Johnson County has such a larger population and also jobs so they are going to generate a lot more traffic.”
According to Transportation 2030’s forecasted roadway congestion models, K-10 is going to generate enough traffic in the next 20 years to become a major problem. Currently, the highway meets none of the criteria to be considered the least bit congested. But by the year 2030, the end of each side of K-10 will be heavily congested and the middle will be nearing congestion.
To combat the issue, the transportation committee has presented several possible changes or alternatives at recent open meetings. Some citizens have responded surprisingly by suggesting a desire for a light rail system connecting Lawrence to Kansas City. When Transportation 2030 asked the question of what gives Lawrence residents the best opportunity to get more access to the area in stakeholder interviews, a light rail system climbed to the top of the list as the most popular response.
“I think it would be a really good idea because it would save gas, save money, make it more easier to take care of roads, make there be less wrecks,” Wurfel said. “Yea, it sounds pretty cool.”
Although committee members chose to share the thought of a light rail system with the public, they are worried about all the obstacles it would have to overcome. Davonna Morgan, Lawrence planning coordinator, said that choosing where to put tracks easily turns into a controversial issue and especially when two separate cities are involved.
Gock thinks there’s an even bigger problem than working together with another city. He said that in 2009, the Kansas Department of Transportation would lose $150 million after a federal funding cut. But still the commissioners aren’t ready to abandon the light-rail talk quite yet.
“I think in the future because traffic will increase, it’s a viable option and we’ll look at that with the next update,” Morgan said. “It’s kind of far away but we see this congestion coming and by the next update we’ll have something more we can look at.”
The committee’s goal is still to find a solution for the incoming problem that can be completed within the next 20 years. If it can leap past the hurdles and figure out the details for a light rail system, the committee will have to soon.
These systems take a long time to construct. The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority built a light rail system in Buffalo, N.Y. in 1978 after deciding it was the best transit option. It wasn’t completed until 1985 and NFTA-Metro rail only covers seven miles of ground. Lawrence to Kansas City rails would account for substantially higher mileage.
The building time for the Buffalo rail system isn’t the only warning sign that it may not be the best alternative. According to the American Public Transportation Association, only 17,000 people per day ride the Buffalo Metro Rail. A successful light rail system, like ones in Portland and San Diego, average more than 100,000 per day. The nation’s top rail system by ridership resides in Boston, where 235,000 people use it to travel per day.
NFTA put in the rail system in Buffalo figuring that the population would continue to ascend upwards. But that didn’t happen and the rail system in Buffalo never quite reached the goal of a top transit choice for citizens. Over the past two years, ridership on the metro rail has declined at a rate of eight percent per year.
But Gock said there are ways to measure how successful a light rail system would be. He said Transportation 2030 and the Kansas Department of Transportation monitored current Lawrence to Kansas City transit methods to evaluate the demand.
“We’re not getting a rail system immediately but the Johnson County K-10 connector, we are running those buses to see people’s levels of interest,” Gock said. “To build a future rail system, we are kind of needing to use buses as a gauge.”
He is referring to a current bus that connects the University of Kansas to Johnson County Community College. Gock said that the connector has received positive feedback. Morgan said the success of the route could serve as a precursor to establishing a stronger relationship with Johnson County officials, which would enable bigger projects like a light rail system to take shape.
“It’s just like any type of business. You put out a product, you see how well it does and you produce more,” Morgan said. “It’s the same theory and with this doing so well, we hope to see more coordination between Johnson County.”
Not everyone is convinced that a light rail system is a practical endeavor to help fight traffic congestion in the future. Two years ago, the Kansas Department of Transportation released a study on K-10 that concluded widening the highway would be the best option. Gock and Morgan said it would have to start in Johnson County but had some promise to fulfill one of Transportation 2030’s goals.
The talk of a light rail system may have just begun and it will likely be years before more specific plans are laid out. But Gock said he expected the idea to mature as the population continued to rise.