Rayna Maggelet is an ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication student assigned to cover Arizona Lutheran Academy for AZPreps365.

Arizona Lutheran Academy students and families pay a high price to attend such a prestigious school, but what amount of tuition goes toward its athletic programs?

ALA's athletic budget is separate from its over-school budget, according to ALA’s athletic director and head coach of the football team David Peter. Up until this year, their money was originally funded by athletic participation fees ($175 for football and $150 for all other sports), business sponsors and other donations, and revenue from gates, concessions, and vending machines.

This year ALA made a change and removed athletic participation fees. 

“Now, a small portion of tuition goes towards those fees which is equal to what we have normally received from athletic participation fees,” Peter says. “I strive to base each individual sports budget on the number of athletes and their needs.”

Peter does understand that a few sports are more expensive to run, such as football, due to equipment needs and some sports have a large amount of fees for meets like cross-country, track, and wrestling. 

The athletic income covers equipment, tournaments and meets fees, AIA dues, officials, and referees costs. During the spring, ALA also hosts a golf tournament that donates all its funds to athletics. 

“We receive enough money to cover the cost of meets each year,” ALA’s cross country coach Mish Aleisa said. “All other money needs to be generated by the program. We will occasionally receive small donations from families that go towards our internal budget, the money we bring in as a program that we can spend freely.”

However, most of the cross-country team’s income comes from running a meet. Though they didn’t run one this year, they dipped into their budget to purchase miscellaneous times such as a tent, foam rollers, towels, etc.), according to Aleisa. 

It varies for every sport program, but Coyote cross country runners, only need to purchase the team t-shirt.

“We try to keep this at $20 or less with minimal markup,” Aleisa said. “The amount we spend depends entirely on meet fees that seem to change yearly. It has gone way up due to inflation in the past 5 years.”

Timing companies need to charge more so the host school needs to charge each participating team more to cover the cost increase, according to Aleisa. 

ALA’s cross-country program did not purchase uniforms this season, but those would be covered by the athletic operating budget. The total operating cost of the cross-country program was around $1900 for the meets, plus another $1000 (rough estimate) for miscellaneous costs.

Parents of ALA athletics are very supportive and participate in their child’s program, as team moms organize lunches and snacks for all the athletes on meet days. The estimate varies and is unknown for every team lunch and snack, but feeding 40+ runners and an entire football team, the cost adds up quickly. All of it is organized and covered by ALA parents. 

Senior ALA football player Jorge Lomeli shared his experience with ALA parents' help and participation in sporting events. 

“They’re [ALA parents] great,” Lomeli said. “They care about the team and organize a lot of things for us, as well as meals.”