Athletics surfing the gas prices wave of 2005

Justin Barnes

Staff Writer

In a world of rising gas prices, the reverberations from the moans and groans of daily drivers can be detected nationwide. Long gone are the days of gas being below $2 per gallon and not caring about mediocre mileage, and with this change brings some much needed adjusting. Community College Athletics are no exception.

Over the past two years, the cost of driving community college athletes to face opponents has skyrocketed from twenty-five cents per mile in 2004, to an unheard of sixty-five cents per mile in 2005. That’s an increase of more than two and a half times the cost over a period of one year.

So how has this ever-increasing cost affected the athletic departments?

“We haven’t changed anything, and that’s the truth.” Says Ken Burrus, Athletic Director at Shoreline Community College. “At the beginning of this year, we wanted to change the way we travel. In my budget proposal to the Student Government, I requested funds to rent charter buses to bus athletes to destinations which may have been excessively long, or having the possibility of facing inclement weather.”

The cost of renting charter buses is nearly $800 per bus, and the proposal was budgeted for as many as 6 trips. As a result of the increased price-per-gallon change, the budget now allows for the teams to stick to the way they’ve been doing it for years: drive school vans to their games, rather than being chartered for special occasions.

This is no different from previous years in Shoreline athletics. “I think the transportation cost was warranted they be increased,” says Burrus, “and I do not disagree with the decision of raising the price-per-mile, it had to be done with the cost of gasoline.”

Although it’s unfortunate to be put in a tight fiscal spot, the athletics program is very well organized by Burrus, and is prepared to deal with repercussions. “If we have an instance where any team is in a spot which absolutely needs a charter bus, we are able to approach to the Student Government and ask for a charter, and I’m willing to do that if it needs to be done.”