A Thursday day after school, I was training with my team just before I went home; our coach gathered us to give us some inconvenient news, that from that day forward we needed to pay to be able to play. Columbus Life consists of various programs which include polideportivo, and extracurricular activities each of them with a different costs. For the past years Columbus Life activities like polideportivo have been free, or that is what we thought. It came as a shock to everyone when for polideportivo a payment was needed. Leaving everyone with the question, why this payment so sudden?

It came as a shock to the TCS athlete community when suddenly to be able to participate in school sports a payment of 300 thousand pesos per semester was required. Freddie Badillo sports coordinator explains, “There’s a misconception students believe that before there was no cost, when it was club deportivo, those costs were part of the tuition.” When asked why this payment was implemented he said, “Year and a half ago in order to sustain polideportivo we charge 300 thousand.”

When the news broke out TCS community were confused, but eventually they did the payment without any question of where the money went or why was the school doing this. Eventually some of the doubts were answered, money was used for sports equipment and modifications in structures. “A lot of that money that we are using is to help the sport department,” said Badillo.

Students have vague emotions on whether the payment have improved athletes work ethic or not. One high school student commented, “I think it was better before when the payment wasn’t required. But I’ve seen that since people pay, they are more dedicated and train more time due to the fact that if they don’t practice they would be wasting their money.” Also, part of the money is being used to get new and better equipment, that is why people now try to take extra care of them now knowing what they are worth.

We have to face a reality, our school isn’t the cheapest and adding costs certainly does no good to our parent’s pocket. That is not only happening in our school, it also happens in many schools around the world that offer an excellent sport program. According to Time Money Magazine, they state that costs are getting out of hand, each year increasing more and more. “According to this year’s Backpack Index — an annual look at the cost of school supplies and other expenses compiled by The Huntington National Bank and nonprofit Communities in Schools — the increase is a little over 7%, across all grade levels.” Some parents have expressed their concern about this topic saying it’s too much money per semester. “I think that it is ok to charge for the Columbus Life but, only one payment for the entire year,” TCS MS and HS parent. As a parent that has kids in both middle school and high school which are involved in sports rather than paying 1.200.000 pesos for the whole year we should pay 600 thousand for both students for the whole year.

Certainly this a problem that TCS community can’t fix in a day, but we can try to change it for it to be fair for everyone. We propose that the sport coordinator and directives to come to a solution that everyone is pleasant with; it can be that the payment is reduced or it’s made by year rather than semestral. Maybe if nothing is done, the sports department would slowly start to decline.