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Health & Fitness

Eat at Panera's to Help Wheaton HS Athletics.

    On Monday, November 25th between 6-9pm, if you choose to eat out for dinner, consider Panera's Bread Shoppe at the Aspen Hill Shopping Center.  If you do you will be helping out Wheaton High School.  During that time Panera Bread will be giving a portion of their sales to the Wheaton High School Athletic Department.  
    High School athletic departments only get a fraction of what they need to keep themselves operational and competitive.  Montgomery County gives approximately 50% to a school of what their expenditures actually are.  The schools are expected to pick up the rest of what they need through gate receipts, concession stand sales and fund raisers.  Despite a new Wheaton High School being built right now, new items will need to be purchased which the county will not be supplying.  Athletics in a high school can get quite expensive.  Uniforms are recycled every year to save on costs.  Most sports get new uniforms every 3-4 years.  Due to the wear and tear, a football uniform gets a quicker rotation.  Even then, Varsity uniforms are usually passed down to JV teams.  Eventually they still need to be replaced.  A complete soccer uniform can cost anywhere from $25-$40 each depending on the type or number ordered.  For a Varsity squad of roughly 18-24 players that becomes real money.  Spread that among the others sports like Field Hockey, Lacrosse (boys and girls), softball, baseball, basketball (boys and girls), tennis, golf, wrestling, swimming, track and now you're outfitting a small army.  New football helmet's are roughly $150 each and men's lacrosse helmet's (girls do not wear helmets in lacrosse) are a little less than that amount.  If a sport requires a ball, they are constantly needing to be replaced.  Schools in the Down County Consortium (Wheaton, Einstein, Northwood, Kennedy and Blair), due to their economic conditions, tend to lag behind the fund raising of the schools in other parts of the county (e.g. Whitman, BCC, Churchill, Quince Orchard, etc). 
    Since construction began last month, Wheaton High School will be losing much of it's revenue due to the loss of their stadium while construction of not only Wheaton High School but also Edison Technology Center is under way.  It's expected to have a new stadium 5 years from now as the last items to be built. 
    Last year, with the help of their Booster Club, Churchill HS raised enough funds to install a new state of the art $85,000 scoreboard.  For the DCC schools like Wheaton it is more about getting the "need to have's" versus the "nice to have's". 
     So for one night (Monday, Nov 25th) maybe a nice soup and salad or a sandwich might sound good.  Especially considering the turkey, stuffing and pie that awaits you later in the week.

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