Each year, changes in athletic funding shape how teams allocate budgets and train during their seasons. In the past, sports funding had been accumulated through gifts, where sports teams possessed individual accounts funded by parent donations. Recently, however, Andover has been moving away from individual accounts and toward more centralized, discretionary funding structures in an effort to maintain fairness across programs.
These changes have altered how teams obtain financing for specific needs. Deputy Head of School Merilee Mardon described the current budgeting process.
“As I understand it, budgeting is a dialogue between athletics and specific teams. Teams identify their needs and relay them through the athletics department, with the goal of supporting students on those teams…there’s been an effort to create more consistent experiences for students, regardless of the team, because the student experience is the priority,” said Mardon.
Mardon continued, “Teams explain their needs, and some teams naturally have bigger expenses than others. Football, for example, requires a lot of equipment, while Ultimate may require less. We’re also a very large and complicated school, so communication is not always perfect. We acknowledge that, and there’s an effort to improve it.”
Scott Hoenig, Head Coach of Boys Varsity Ultimate and Instructor in Mathematics, explained that his team had a specially designated account parents could donate to in past years. Now, the team communicates its needs directly to the athletics department.
“We spent [the gifts account] on the stuff that the parents wanted us to, in this case it was the video camera system and some subscriptions for several years. That gift account is no longer there. Now we just say what it is that we need and so we continue to be able to have that monthly subscription for the video system,” said Hoenig. “From my perspective that hasn’t hampered our program… I’m able to get what it is that we need.”
Similar to team gift funds, dorm funding has also moved towards a more centralized structure in recent years. Dean of Students and Residential Life Susan Esty explained that the previous system, in which each dorm had its own fund for parent donations, created inequities between dorms. She noted that the creation of a centralized House Discretionary Fund was intended to address those disparities.
“Sometimes you might, by just luck of the draw, because we’re intentionally diverse, you might have a big dorm that has a whole lot of funding from parents, and you could have a big dorm that has very little funding from parents. You all have the per-head school funding. With the parent gifts, it was really inequitable. And so, we ask house counselors to share it at the start of the year, that if you want to make a donation for dorm activities, dorm bonding, this sort of thing, please contribute to the House Discretionary Fund. And that just means that people can make gifts, and all the dorms have access to the funds. It’s that simple. There’s no strict control over it, but there is oversight of it,” said Esty.
Girls Junior Varsity Squash player Danielle Han ’28 reflected on how funding has positively impacted her team’s facilities and equipment.
“I feel like our courts are definitely one of the best, if not the best in our league. They’re really spacious, and you can tell that the school has put a lot of money, effort, and time into planning the courts. Also, because we have such a big squash community, it makes sense for us to have such a big facility. We have squash cannons, they launch squash balls at you, but we had them last year as well. But not every school has those. In comparison to other schools, we honestly have good equipment,” said Han.
Ultimate has also benefited from increased resources this year. Samantha Gong ’28, a member of Girls Varsity Ultimate, compared the team’s current equipment and field access to previous seasons.
“We have a sufficient amount of pennies and cones. We were also able to hand out every single kid who didn’t have a disc, a disc to practice on their own time. I have a school disc from last year, but all the new kids got one this year. So that’s pretty nice. And we also got some new designs on them. So I think they’re new. We have two fields this year and two full fields. We had that last year, but we never trained on two. It allowed us to definitely do more scrimmages, more full field scrimmages,” said Gong.
As part of Boys Varsity Golf, Junu Lee ’29 reflected on the quality and new improvements made to the facilities over the academic year, as well as new team merchandise.
“We have two Trackmans, they’re pretty expensive. One hasn’t been working for a few months, but now it’s fixed. We also got a new screen. And we practice at a nice course every day,” said Lee.
Lee continued, “We are getting some clothes and travel bags from a brand called Holderness and Bourne. One of the founders graduated from Andover, and this year he decided to present us with some clothes. [We] haven’t gotten them yet, but I think they’re gonna be nice. We’re getting two hoodies, two polos, and a travel bag. The bags have our names on them.”
