Richland middle schools to add soccer in the fall

Richland middle school students will have another fall sports option beginning next school year.

The Richland School Board agreed this past week to start both boys and girls soccer teams at all its middle schools. The teams would combine seventh- and eighth-graders and play Pasco and Kennewick middle schools with their own teams.

Superintendent Rick Schulte asked the board to consider waiting on a decision because the new sport means an additional financial commitment of more than $130,000, and he expects to see many more new funding requests for the next school year.

Board member Brett Amidan, the only board member to vote against creating the soccer teams, questioned why the district couldn’t just support and work with the region’s established independent leagues or introduce another sport that isn’t as available for students to try.

But a district survey of middle school students showed that soccer would command more interest than cross country, which already is offered. Members of the soccer community also said that not everyone interested in the sport is able to play because of the cost.

“For the students unable to play at club level, it gives them the opportunity to play,” said Evan Buelt, a licensed soccer coach.

Parents and a district employee approached administrators about establishing middle school soccer about a year ago. A December survey of 985 middle school students — a little more than a third of the middle school enrollment — found that most planned to play in a fall sport.

Of those students who planned to play sports, more than 20 percent, or 147 kids, said they would play soccer if it was available.

Soccer fields could be established at the district’s three middle schools with careful planning, a district report said. A future middle school in West Richland is designed to have a soccer field when it opens in fall 2017.

It also means the district would have to buy tens of thousands of dollars of new athletic equipment to start, and there would be annual cost of almost $85,000 per year to maintain the teams — mostly for salaries for coaches and groundskeepers.

Schulte said that he’s anticipating new budget requests for early childhood education efforts, school resource officers, professional development for first-grade teachers and others in the 2016-17 school year budget.

“It seems more prudent to me for the board to delay a commitment to funding a new soccer program until other new requests can also be considered,” he told the board in a memo. “Otherwise, we may find that we have committed to budget soccer when we would have preferred to spend on another program.”

While the school teams would aim to allow more kids to play soccer who don’t have the opportunity, Amidan questioned whether that would really happen, or if the kids who play on local club teams would take those spots instead.

He suggested looking into having the district provide some financial support to those teams. But Galt Pettet, the district’s in-house attorney, said that could raise legal questions about labor and use of public funds.

Buelt and district parent Julie Robertson told the board that there are few students playing at the top level of the Tri-Cities’ top soccer clubs, maybe a couple per school.

Participation on those teams is also difficult for some families, who have to help pay not only for coaches, but expenses that come with traveling west of the Cascades several times in a season.

If there’s ever a time to establish soccer teams, now is the time to do it, Buelt said, adding that interest in the sport is reaching a peak.

“We just won the women’s World Cup,” he told the board, noting that interest in girls’ soccer is particularly high. The U.S. team’s goalie, Hope Solo, is a Richland native.

Board member Heather Cleary told the Herald later that there’s clearly high interest from students and parents in having soccer at the district’s middle schools. But beyond that, she said establishing the teams will be yet another way to motivate kids who might otherwise have little interest in their education.

“Activities connect kids to school,” Cleary said. “When kids aren’t performing well in school, (activities) give them an incentive to perform well so they can participate.”

This story was originally published March 12, 2016 at 4:20 PM with the headline "Richland middle schools to add soccer in the fall."