Added Ticket Cost Helps Pay For Helmets

Season ticket holders for Enumclaw High School football games are paying an added fee this year. It’s not to help pay for the new stadium. It’s to make sure the players are safe.

A new rule in the state this year is that football helmets have to be
recertified, which means they are inspected and reconditioned for the safety of the players. It costs about $35 per helmet to do the refurbishing. Since there are about 100 EHS helmets, that amounts to $3,500.

Patrick Forza, vice president of the Enumclaw Football Foundation, said the school district couldn’t afford to pay for the work to be done. And the foundation didn’t want players to have to pay the fee because there already is a pay-to-play cost for athletics at EHS.

So the foundation decided to tack on an extra $2.50 for each game for season ticket holders. Instead of $6 per game, which is the general admission cost, season ticket holders will pay $8.50 a game. Since there are four home games this year, that amounts to $34. The Associated Student Body will get $24 and the other $10 is for helmet refurbishing. Since there are about 320 seats for season ticket holders, that will just about pay the total cost.

“The club’s making zero off of this,” Forza said.

Forza said there are only about 36 season ticket spots left that have unobstructed views of the new Astroturf field at the Expo Center. He said some grandparents have purchased season tickets in the front row of the stadium because they don’t like to climb stairs, even though their views will be partially obstructed.

At the newly painted grandstands, season ticket holders get the maroon seats, students sit in the gold seats and the general public is in the white seats.

Forza said more season tickets are being sold this year because of problems in the past with parents of players not being able to get them because they were snatched up so fast by the community. As a result, those parents had to get to games early to get a good seat, and they were not able to participate in foundation events, such as pregame tailgate parties.

“If they left their seat they lost it,” Forza said.