Lane Tech, The School of Champions, is a school that brings in city championships seasonally with the help of its athletes’ time, energy, and especially their money. But what is the price for a potential city championship team?

No matter what sport a student might take part in during high school, there is only one way to get the gear and equipment needed to play the sport. Lane athletes can pay up to a few hundred dollars in order to get the gear and equipment needed to play their sport.

“There’s $300 for the player’s fee, $100 for transportation fee, and practice gear is around $100,” Varsity Baseball pitcher Brett Wicklund, Div. 751, said.

There are also optional additional prices a player may pay for advanced training in their sport. Peter Ingravallo, Div. 770, was one of the dozen baseball players that went to Florida for a baseball training camp. When adding up all the prices, Ingravallo had said “the trip in total averaged up to $800.”

At this rate, being on the baseball team can cost the player up to $1,200 in fees. Although this may seem to be a little high for other athletes, it is inexpensive when looking to play for a baseball team.

“I think the cost of playing baseball is reasonable,” Ingravallo said. “Given the club baseball in the summer, the cost goes up to $2,000-$3,000 just for one season. Paying $450-$500 for one season of high school baseball is worth it to me.”

Even if a high school season costs a fourth of the cost of a city club, it still can be troubling for some athletes to pay for it. That’s why the booster club, a group in each sports team that handles money, finds ways to make playing costs as cheap as possible.

Elizabeth Cyrwus, Div. 760, gives further detail into how much the Girl’s Lacrosse booster club does for their players.

“The booster club did a lot of fundraising,” Elizabeth Cyrwus, Div. 760, said. “They made up the idea of selling socks that said “Go Lane Tech Go.”

Girls lacrosse was able to purchase hundreds of dollars of new equipment.

This year was the first year they were able to buy more equipment for their goalie. For four years, they have had the same goalie equipment and it did not come out of the player’s pocket, thanks to the booster club.

Although all athletes don’t mind paying for new equipment through the funds in their booster club, some feel that there are fees that should not be completely charged towards them. The baseball team recently purchased a batting turtle, a cage that helps them work on their batting in an enclosed space with no worries of hitting another teammate.

The batting turtle is kept in the Kerry Wood field and is used by several other teams. Because of the use of Lane owned equipment by other schools, the Lane baseball team feel it is unfair.

“A batting turtle was bought with the money that the booster club has raised, which is thousands of dollars,” Wicklund said. “Yet there are three other schools that all use it. We are the ones that had paid for that batting turtle. We paid the full fee for it, but they use it. Lakeview, DePaul, and St. Pats use it.”

Another fee that leaves Lane athletes confused is the mandatory transportation fee that every athlete is required to pay for each season. Athletes pay the $100 transportation fee and are left trying to figure out where their money has gone. They also are left with having to figure how to get to such games on their own.

“They never offer us buses,” Wicklund said. “One time they offered a bus and it was on a Saturday morning when we had already agreed to carpool as usual. There are 29 people in our team that pay the transportation fee. That is $2,900 that we don’t know where it might be going to.

The lack of buses may not be the case for all athletes, but there are still complications with those that do receive buses.

“The thing is, we get really small buses and we have very huge teams,” Cyrwus said. “It’s really frustrating because sometimes, on the bus rides there, people would have to ride on the bus floor.”