Arizona Athletic Assoc. Announces new Fees to Alleviate Budget Woes

July 3, 2014 /

From The Daily Courier

Arizona’s high school sports governing body has unveiled a series of new fees to reduce a $519,000 budget shortfall from the last fiscal year.

The new fees have caught many school administrators off guard and they now must find a means to pay for them, according to The Arizona Republic.

Some wonder if they will be required to drop sports in order to make ends meet, or if this signals the end of some of the state’s prominent annual tournaments.

The Arizona Interscholastic Association announced the new charges for the coming school year in a memo it sent to its 272 member schools on June 11.

The new structure took effect Tuesday and is the executive board’s response to rapidly rising costs, particularly those associated with maintaining its stable of game officials and running annual state-championship tournaments.

Among the new fees is $50 to $350 for qualifying teams wishing to enter sectional or state tournaments; $100 for all out-of-state teams participating in invitational tournaments, to be collected or paid by the host member school; a service charge of $10 for each cancellation or game-change request as long as the request is not related to things beyond the school’s control such as weather or transportation issues; and a $3 per-game charge for the assignment of officials for regular-season and invitational tournaments.

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