With 27 sports offered at Algonquin, planning equitable funding for each team is a balancing act when considering needs and wants against the number of athletes. Athletic Director Mike Mocerino works alongside Superintendent Greg Martineau and the school committee each year to distribute funds and determine when an increase in athletic funding is required to meet the needs of all sport programs.
According to Algonquin’s budget book for the 2025-2026 school year, the approved athletics budget for this year is $709,185.00, which is a 12.92% percent increase from last school year’s $628,022.00. This budget covers the coaching and referee salaries, as well as the fees for equipment, facility rentals and transportation for the school year.
“Every year, salaries and expenses are increased,” Martineau said. “We also shifted a position that supports athletics that was on the revolving account to the operational budget, so that is another reason why you’re seeing that increase.”
The Northborough-Southborough school district, funded by local assessments and state aid, provides a specified operational budget for athletic programs. This covers operating expenses like coaching salaries in addition to equipment, transportation and facility rental costs. The revolving account is mostly supplied by booster programs run by parents and coaches to separately raise funds for individual sports teams.
“It’s the combination of those two that make the total athletic budget,” Martineau said.
In order to register for a sport, there is a seasonal $200 student participation fee, which goes to the revolving account. Algonquin has a family cap of $900 per year to help reduce financial strain on larger families. According to Mocerino, generally, sports with the most student-athlete participation tend to receive more funding from the revolving account.
“We do not lower the operational budget if we’re taking in more funding in the revolving account,” Martineau said. “Basically, what we look at in terms of revolving account and athletic fees is a five year average. There are a number of years when we have more students enrolled at Algonquin, so more students might participate in athletics than other years, and we look at a balance of a five-year continuum in terms of budget.”
During the 2023-2024 school year, Northborough-Southborough residents supported the Gonkplex (around $7.5 million) through their taxes, a project that built two new turf fields among other renovations to the athletic complex. According to Bevan, the Gonkplex funds were not added to the athletic budget, and its completion instead lowered the amount of funding needed for some sports because paying for off-site facilities was no longer an additional paycheck.
“[Off-site facilities] had a pretty significant cost, and now we don’t have to pay it anymore,” Principal Sean Bevan said. “[Many teams] were playing at off-site locations, so they didn’t have fans come and it’s a hardship on families. We’re happy to have them come back to our facility for the joyfulness of it and for a positive budget impact.”
Funding for sports teams can vary for several reasons. Some teams, such as football and indoor track and field, receive more funding because their sports involve unavoidable expenses such as equipment fees and facility rentals. Funds will continue to vary from sport-to-sport based on individual needs depending on the year.
“Some sports are more expensive than others, so equipment needs that can dictate if one sport receives more funding than the other,” Martineau said. “We have a uniform and equipment replacement cycle that we try to rotate through so it’s not arbitrary who gets new uniforms. From there, the detailed budget really is developed by the athletic director with the principal.”
Bevan emphasized that the process of deciding how much funding should be split across sports is never an easy job, and it often involves several people to determine what the operating costs of each sport is.
“I do quite a bit of communicating with the athletic director, Mr. Mocerino, about anything that is a challenge or opportunity in our school,” Bevan said. “That has to do with hiring or sometimes how we spend our money.”
Mocerino is entrusted with balancing student-athlete needs and wants, while keeping in mind financial and physical restraints.
“As the athletic director, I oversee the budgeting process for the athletic department,” Mocerino said. “My role includes evaluating each sport’s needs, balancing the overall budget provided by the school and district and ensuring fair and equitable distribution of resources. I work closely with coaches, the principal and the business office.”
Every fall, all school departments, including the athletic department, attend an annual meeting to create a detailed budget for the year. The athletic director presents a first draft budget to the principal, and they work together to create a final budget outline that is then proposed to the central office leadership team, the finance department and assistant superintendent.
“We talk about the goals of the budget, what we are trying to accomplish, the outcomes we are trying to achieve and how we’re trying to impact the athletic experience for students,” Martineau said.
Algonquin must also comply with federal laws such as Title IX, which outlaws sex-based discrimination in education programs, in addition to other factors. These include transportation requirements and frequencies, competition entry fees and the revenue generated.
“The easiest part, relatively speaking, is evaluating sports with stable needs and participation, as they offer more predictable and consistent budgeting data,” Mocerino said. “The hardest part is maintaining consistent support for all programs while also striving for growth, without having to make cuts, especially as costs and participation levels fluctuate each year.”
The allocation of funds for sports involves many moving variables that must be observed carefully every year. It is possible for less-known Algonquin sports to receive just as much funding as more popular sports.
“Each sport has a specific budget line item, and there are additional operational line items that support all teams,” Mocerino said. “For example, wrestling and cross country may appear smaller, but they participate in several invitational meets beyond the regular season schedule. Because of this, they receive funding to help cover the cost of those events.”
When a sports team wants to make a purchase that goes beyond the operational funds they receive from the school, they often use revolving funds from booster fundraisers.
“Boosters play a significant role in supplementing school-provided funds,” Mocerino said. “While we do not reduce a team’s funding based on booster support, programs with strong booster clubs often have access to more opportunities for enhancements, like team meals, gear and specific equipment needs. Without the supplemental financial support from the Booster Club, it would be difficult to keep up with the growing yearly demands.”
The Booster Club is composed of dedicated parents and contains a big bank account for all 27 sports that Algonquin offers.
“Each sport has a fund raising account,” Booster Club President Paul Cacciatore said. “We manage the money in that account by team. When Mr. Mocerino says he wants to purchase something that will affect all the teams, he comes to the Boosters and asks to use the Booster budget.”
Each sport has their own parent representative, who holds discussions about the beginning of the year with the coach since parents often run the fundraisers.
“They come up with an individual budget with the coach, and it’s run by Mocerino,” Cacciatore said. “Before the booster and rep [makes a purchase], they will have a discussion and ask if it is already allocated by the operational budget.”
Teams often use fundraisers as their main source of funding.
“All the money they raise comes back to their booster account,” Cacciatore said. “They use it as needed. Generally, they use it for equipment, senior gifts and [food] on road games, so it’s everything that may not necessarily fall on the operating budget.”
Some sports, like football, also charge spectators an admission fee to grow their revolving account.
“Athletic fees and gate receipts cover under 50% of the entire budget when considering the athletics revolving account combined with the athletic funds allocated through the operational budget,” Mocerino said.
According to Mocerino, indoor track and field in the winter is one of the Algonquin sports that receive high operational budgets. According to head coach of indoor and outdoor girls’ track Patrick Galvin, this is largely due to the indoor track team not having home meets. Instead, all the meets are at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center or at New Balance’s The Track.
“Depending on the meet, the cost per meet is anywhere between $500 to $2,000 [due to entry fees],” Galvin said.
Despite having more participants, outdoor track and field in the spring tends to receive less funding than its indoor counterpart.
“We have dual meets in outdoor track which are League costs, which are very minimal,” Galvin said. “And we have the District E, Central Mass Championship meet, which is not a League meet cost but still very minimal. In fact, since last year we hosted it, it was free.”
In order to get funds to run both these programs, both the boys’ and girls’ indoor and outdoor track and field teams primarily focus on a track camp in the summer for fundraising.
“In the past, I’ve been the track camp director, and that is a massive undertaking,” Galvin said. “So, we shifted to coaches and parents being co-directors of track camp. 100 kids come for 15 hours [split among five days in the summer], along with 40-50 high school students for the tentative events we cycle through.”
Algonquin football is generally considered one of the most popular sports offered at the school, both in terms of participation and spectators. However, running such a large program requires significant funding. Despite charging an entry fee for games, the football team does not keep the money.
“I believe this goes to Athletics in general,” head coach of varsity football Mark Allen said. “We do get support from Athletics, with new uniform money every 5 years as other teams do. Athletics also helps us with purchasing new footballs, reconditioning equipment and with bus transportation.”
Instead, the football team’s main funds come from fundraisers like selling discount cards and a raffle at the end of the season.
“Football is generally the most expensive sport to run, at any level,” Allen said.
However, oftentimes before making purchases, Allen must first get support from the football boosters because they manage the football account as a part of general boosters.
“If I have a purchase in mind, or if boosters want to purchase something, we discuss it and ultimately vote on it,” Allen said. “A majority vote is needed for major purchases.”
Mocerino, Martineau and Bevan seek to properly fund their student-athletes to give them as much support as possible to perform at their best. In the future, Mocerino plans to encourage fundraising initiatives, gain increased school funding and explore new or old partnerships and grants.
“Managing an athletics budget is a several hundred thousand budget, and it’s not easy, but we’re always aiming to keep kids safe and well-equipped and well-coached,” Bevan said.
