Construction of a new concession stand at Mountain Lion Stadium was a Booster Club project.
Parents’ support needed to keep organization alive
Throughout its 29-year history, the Liberty Bell Booster Club (LBBC) has quietly served the students of Liberty Bell Junior/Senior High School and Methow Valley community by undertaking projects, buying equipment and supporting campus activities.
The continuation of that long and proud tradition is in peril for lack of an active membership. “We just don’t have the bodies we need to do the work,” lamented current Booster Club President Jim McMillan.
From its beginnings in 1992, one of its core values has been to “promote a desire and spirit for extra-curricular activities of Liberty Bell Junior and Senior High School, including the Methow Valley Independent Learning Center,” according to the organization’s bylaws.
The club was established in 1992 as a 501(c)3 nonprofit through the efforts of a group of Liberty Bell parents, encouraged and supported by then-Supt. Suellen White. In the late 1980s into the early ’90s, there was great support for the girls’ basketball and boys’ wrestling programs, fostered by the parents and coaches of those programs.
“They were well-funded and somewhat organized for those two sports,” said White. “They had raised lots of money to be used for summer camps, equipment and other stuff for their sports.”
Meanwhile, the rest of the sports programs, failing that sort of organization, were placed at a disadvantage in raising those extra monies beyond what the district could provide.
“We thought that having a single organization would be the best way to support all programs,” White continued. The Liberty Bell Boosters grew out of that idea.
With the opening of the new high school at its current location in 1996, LBBC’s first big project, and still the biggest one to date, was construction of the grandstand at the new football field, an $80,000 project. Bob Naney, a member of boosters in its early days, recalled the project as mostly fundraising and some elbow grease.
“As I recall, we mostly raised funds, hired the architect and contractor and took out a loan. Most of the work we did was cleaning up after the grandstand was built,” he said.
White recalls that those early years of the new high school location included significant resources and volunteer time actually building the fields and installing lighting and other fixtures.
“Ray Ellis at the Electric Co-op was huge in the building of the fields. He worked his butt off raising monies for those projects,” White said.
Many projects
Through the years a number of other notable projects have been completed with funding from boosters including the big green netting for the backstop, as well as the fencing at Mountain Lion Baseball Field, the padded chairs, volleyball standards and padding in the gym, lighting for the tennis courts, and fencing at the football/ soccer stadium and track.
The PA system at the stadium was added as a partnership project with two local sound professionals, Myron Wengerd and Gary Ryan, in 2009. Two years ago, using monies raised over the past 15 years, the construction of a concession stand was completed, also at Mountain Lion Stadium.
LBBC has also worked with school staff, discretely supporting individual students of economic need over the years, assisting with pay-to-play fees, personal equipment purchases and helping kids overcome barriers to participation in interscholastic activities.
When the school’s ASB terminated the practice of providing students with meal funding for attendance at state events, LBBC teamed with Winthrop Kiwanis to provide coaches with support for two team meals at those events.
Boosters and Kiwanis have also partnered with the Methow Valley School District to replace scoreboards in the Cub and Eagle gyms at the elementary school, as well as the new scoreboard at the stadium.
For several years, when funding was short, LBBC also partnered with the school district to fund the program’s uniform rotation, providing replacement uniforms for every Liberty Bell program on a rotational basis, including first-time uniforms for the tennis team a few years back.
Help needed
Currently, with pay-to-play going away, and with the elimination of game/event admission fees, and increased numbers of students participating in extracurricular activities, all would seem to be well and good for the sports program and its supporters.
Yet the interest and parent participation in LBBC has waned to the point of only a handful of people taking an active role in club activities.
COVID has also had an apparent role in the reduced numbers of active boosters. In a pre-season interview during the first week of fall practice, McMillan expressed some frustration over a lack of commitment to the first big event of this season, volunteers for the concession stand at Liberty Bell’s opening home football game this coming Friday (Sept. 10).
At the volleyball parents’ meeting with staff, McMillan, looking at assistant coach Stephanie Mitchell, told the crowd of gathered parents and players, “Right now, it’s me and Stephanie.” McMillan, the head football coach for the junior high, and Mitchell will both be involved with team practices on Friday afternoon until 5-6 p.m. on game day and not available to set up and prepare for concession operation.
Mitchell, in a plea to her athletes’ parents, reiterated McMillan’s point: “Right now, with just the two of us, Booster Club is spiraling downward. We need some parents to step up and help out.”
It’s not only in the concessions role of raising money, but organizationally, more people are needed to manage and operate the club. McMillan, while currently serving as the president, is actually prohibited in the organizational bylaws from holding an elective and voting position on the board. He has been willing to act as the club president, but only temporarily until someone steps up to help lead the organization.
LBBC has relied on memberships, donations, concessions, spirit wear sales and a banner/sign advertising program. A long-standing agreement between the LBBC and school district provides the boosters with first right of refusal for concession sales at all events held on campus.
Similar schools like Okanogan and Oroville have active boosters. Oroville historically has executed a number of special fundraising projects and works concessions. Okanogan depends on an annual auction and advertising through banners, plaques and a video system in their gym that runs a constant thank you to booster members and businesses that support the organization.
McMillan recently accepted an invitation of the Okanogan’s annual dinner auction and was impressed. “They raise all of their annual needs at that one event. But it takes a lot of work and a lot of people to pull it off,” he reported. “It was an amazing event.”
Looking ahead
With the lack of active members this year, LBBC’s future is tenuous. The club is looking for people to fill leadership positions but mostly new members are needed to accomplish the work of fundraising and communication.
Most prominently, operation of concessions at fall events like football and girls’ soccer games is the immediate need. There are currently no plans to offer concessions at girls’ volleyball matches this season, mostly as a COVID-19 precautionary measure, eliminating that potential for close group gatherings and indoor processing and consumption of food.
Club efforts are currently focused on returning to a regular meeting schedule, recruitment of membership and officers, and moving forward identifying needs around the campus.
The school district has a long-standing cooperative relationship with LBBC, and would like to see that continue. While the district has found itself financially in a position to eliminate all pay-to-play fees and game admissions, Activities Director Michael Wilbur says that a re-energized and viable booster organization is vital. He recognized the strong tradition of support and accomplishment of LBBC: “The bottom line is that the impact of Booster Club goes far beyond the dollars raised. The boosters are instrumental in creating a climate where students feel honored and appreciated, a culture of inclusivity, belonging and dignity. As a district, we’ll work hard with those who step forward to continue the booster tradition of making huge contributions to Liberty Bell.”
Getting involved
Booster club membership is easy, according to McMillan. “You just have to be available for meetings and volunteer occasionally.” The club does have an application, strictly for information only, and a minimal dues requirement of $30 per year. That $30 goes directly into the operational budget of the club.
Specifically, McMillan is looking for more “dad” involvement. “Boosters has been kind of a mom thing recently,” McMillan said, referring to meetings and activities that are noticeably more populated by Liberty Bell mothers and not so much by fathers. Dads seem to show up to support concessions at football games when a barbeque is involved, but dad involvement in meetings, planning and most concession and fund raising projects has been lacking for a number of years.
McMillan’s desire is to get things up and running again, with a full slate of officers, board members and active committees. Along with McMillan and Mitchell, Pam Purtell is serving as treasurer. Purtell has been involved with boosters since 2007. Her last child graduated from Liberty Bell in 2012, but she has felt the drive to support kids as she is able by handling the business administration portion of the club. She would finally like to step away from LBBC after 15 years and focus on her family, now scattered about.
LBBC does have a social media presence on Facebook where viewers can get event information, scores and results, an occasional breakdown of games and events. Boosters have an email account at libertybellboosterclub@yahoo.com. Messages can also be dropped at the Liberty Bell front office.
“Speaking personally, I have so much appreciation for all that the boosters have done, and hope to be working on new projects — and continuing old ones — with a fresh, invigorated group of Booster Club leaders in the years to come,” Wilbur said. “We just need people to fill those big shoes of the folks who’ve done it for a long time.”
