Written by By Theresa Knapp Enos
After a fundraising drive by middle school students and a $3,000 donation from the Raynham Lions Club, sports at the Raynham Middle School have been saved.
Parents who paid half of the $325 registration fee up front for the self-supporting programs likely won’t have to make another payment as a result.
“We’re in line for them not to pay any more than that $160 because of the help of the Lions Club and other donations,” said Lori Donohue. She estimates 180 students will participate in the Raynham Middle School’s basketball, softball and baseball programs.
The money will allow Raynham students, but not Bridgewater’s, to participate in the sports.
Donohue, along with fellow parent Laura Tate, helped spearhead fundraising efforts after all sports programs at the district’s middle schools were eliminated from this year’s budget. It was a decision the Bridgewater-Raynham Regional School Committee called “tough” but necessary as it struggled to keep teachers in the classrooms and class sizes low.
The School Committee asked the member towns’ park and recreation departments to step up and offer enrichment programs geared toward middle school-age children. But that wasn’t enough for Raynham parent Deb Korotsky, whose sixth-grade daughter, Stacy, plays on the basketball team.
“She gets more practice in the school program for her travel team,” said Korotsky. “The travel team has limited practice time, but in the middle school program she’s practicing every day. She loves the sport. She absolutely loves it.”
Korotsky said some students couldn’t participate this year because of the high cost. After the school district eliminated middle school sports, it reversed its stance and approved the return of the programs as long as they were self-supporting. The user’s fee went up from $250 to $325 per student per sport.
“I think more kids would have tried out for the teams had the price not been so high. Actually, we know some kids didn’t try out because of the cost factor,” said Korotsky.
Frank Gendreau, president of the Raynham Lions Club, said the Lions Club heard of the sports program’s plight through a member and invited the parents in for a presentation on the fundraising efforts the group had put forward already — bake sales, snack tables at sporting events, Crazy Hate days, tag collecting at store fronts and the town’s landfill. He said the Lions also wanted to support the cause, and presented a check for $3,000 to Donohue last Thursday.
“I am a former college professor and I know just how important it is not just for kids to be good at what they do in school, academically, but athletics is an important part of the maturation process and many of these young children would not be able to play because of the very high cost,” said Gendreau, who served on the town’s School Committee in the 1980s.
Gendreau said the Lions Club, which has 55 active members, donates an average of $20,000 to $25,000 every year to local causes including the library, food basket, Boy Scouts, camps for sick children and programs for senior citizens, as well as their own scholarship, eyeglass and hearing aid programs.
Donohue said she is glad the sports programs have been restored.
“Sports really is part of the whole middle school experience, and to return sports introduces the kids to different people to work with on your teams,” she said. “It may sound crazy but, when you’re just playing with the town, you’re not with the same bunch of kids that you’re with on the school teams … It’s all part of the social environment and I think it adds a lot to enrich the middle school experience.”
If you go …
What: Raynham Middle School sports fundraiser to offset costs of middle school sports programs.
Who: Steve Wronker’s Funny Business Comedy Hypnosis Show.
When: Jan. 29 at 7 p.m.
Where: Raynham Middle School auditorium, 420 Titicut Road, Raynham.
Cost: $10 for students, $12 for adults.
More info: Contact Lori Donohue at laucfp@comcast.net
