University of Idaho men’s lacrosse won’t make it to the end of the season without depleting their available funds. To counteract it, they’ve started a GoFundMe fundraiser with a $10,000 goal.
Despite their financial problems, the club is just happy to play after the long haul of lockdown from COVID-19.
“We’re happy to be out there,” coach Colton Raichl said. “No matter what the score is, we’re playing, and we weren’t playing a year and a half ago, so that’s the biggest thing.”
Just before spring break in 2020, the club got back to Moscow from away games. Suddenly COIVD-19 hit, and everything shut down. The season was over.
“I don’t know really what went through my head,” said Trent Patton, a junior player that was on the team during the spring 2020 season. “I was really more focused on school at the time, and school said, ‘don’t come back.’”
In fall 2020, only four or five players returned to the team. Raichl said no one wanted to commit to going to school far away from home if they would end up stuck in a dorm doing online classes.
While they were able to practice during this time, the team was always masked, socially distanced and heavily disinfected. For the few players on the team, it was tough.
But now things are now looking up. They have 15 new players and three from the original 2020 team. They’ve dropped down a division and are better matched with teams of equal sizes.
“Things are looking a lot more positive than they were back in March of 2020,” Raichl said.
The new division brings a particular challenge for the team: Travel. Because they switched to Division II late, all their new games were scheduled to be away.
“We just have to travel so much further than everybody else,” Raichl said. “We’re pretty far away from everybody in the league, but it’s going to be a good year since we get to do it.”
Raichl said the club used to receive around $10,000 from the school that paid for travel expenses, along with NCLA league fees and the cost for referees. League fees alone are $4,250. Referees are paid per mile to travel to games, which gets costly as most come from Seattle or Boise.
In 2016, the university dealt with budgeting dilemmas, and the fund for men’s lacrosse was cut by about 10% every year, according to Raichl. This year, a club member missed a sports club audit meeting and the budget for men’s lacrosse was reduced to $1,000.
If fundraising doesn’t work out, their last resort will be to increase player dues by $500. Dues are already $2,250 for a full year. Raichl doesn’t anticipate raising them, but it isn’t off the table.
Along with the GoFundMe, the team has launched other fundraisers. One is the lacrosse registry. It’s like a wedding registry, so someone can buy the team a set of dishes, a waffle iron, a tank of gas or a meal during a trip. In the spring, they plan to do a wing eating competition between team members. They hope to get pledged amounts for how many wings players can eat.
Raichl said alumni have already been very supportive of their fundraisers, especially from southern Idaho. The GoFundMe, which was launched last week, has received $20 in donations as of Dec. 12.
Patton said this was a time of rebuilding for the club. While it is a mostly new team, the future looks promising.
Cody Roberts can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @CodyRobReports