Birchmount students can’t play football without new helmets, and can’t afford them. Now what?

When Asher Edgson started Grade 9 at Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute — a Scarborough school with a long sports tradition and an impressive stadium out back — he was looking forward to joining the football team.

“It’s just a lot of fun, and contact sports really make you closer to your team. It’s like a family,” the 15-year-old Edgson said.

Only there wasn’t a football team for him to join this year. And it’s not looking good for next year, either, because the school can’t afford to replace its outdated football helmets as required by the school board.

Edgson and other students who want to play, including 16-year-old Jake Strudwicke, don’t know all the details about why their school wasn’t able to restart its long-standing team after the COVID-19 pandemic. They do know it has to do with safety rules and money, and they think it’s unfair.

“Our field is like the main field that’s used for (other schools’) games. So seeing that our own school doesn’t even have a team, it’s kind of devastating,” Strudwicke said.

For years, there have been growing concerns that the range of opportunities, sports and other extracurricular activities available to kids in Ontario’s public school system relies not only on the willingness of teachers to volunteer their time, but also on a school’s ability to raise funds and charge student fees to pay for the many items not covered by provincial education funding.

That means students who attend schools such as Birchmount, with many low-income families, don’t necessarily get the same experience as those who attend more affluent schools where parent councils can raise big sums for everything from teams to field trips to awards.

According to Birchmount’s longtime football coach, Chris Rhora, the figure needed to get the football team back on the field is a big one: $20,000. A helmet alone costs $400 or more, and a team needs about 50.

Toronto District School Board rules require those helmets to be recertified as safe every three years, and replaced after 10. Birchmount’s helmets are now a decade old, even though they haven’t been used since the 2019 fall season, before the pandemic shutdown.

“Student safety is so vitally important. But, on the same hand, we want to play and we just don’t have the money available to make that happen,” said Rhora, who has taught and coached at Birchmount since 2006.

“For me as a coach, it’s awful, because I see these other schools playing football, but when my kids come out — who I know need this and want it — they’re saying, ‘How come these guys can do it and we can’t?’ It’s heartbreaking almost, because you know that their desire is there, but we’re being limited because of money,” he said. “And the worst thing about it is, we’ve got all the rest of the equipment. Everything else is here. It’s just literally helmets.”

Schools receive funding for student needs including sports, but each school decides how to earmark those funds. Birchmount uses much of its funding to reduce fees for its exceptional athlete program, so that cost is not a barrier, TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird said.

Meeting the needs of the whole student body with limited funds means a sport with costs as high as football, which reaches about 50 students, has to rely on additional support.

Western Technical-Commercial, which launched Toronto’s first high school girls tackle football program this year, managed to field a team in 2021 by borrowing helmets from a local club. Last year, new helmets were bought with a Canadian Tire Jumpstart grant (designed to return kids to sport after the pandemic) plus additional fundraising and small player fees, coach Russ Hoff said.

It’s not just a Toronto issue.

Huron Heights Secondary School in Newmarket, for example, gets no funds from the school or York region boards for football equipment. Everything is paid for through fundraising by the Warriors Football Booster Club and player fees, coach Heath Weir said.

Malvern Collegiate Institute, four kilometres west of Birchmount, got its football team back on the field this year with new helmets thanks to fundraising by its parent council, Rhora has been told. Knowing that would be a much harder ask at Birchmount, he put up a GoFundMe page last Sunday, directed at school alumni and other football supporters.

“Some schools have this kind of money available,” he wrote in his fundraising appeal. “Our Parent Council is working towards this, but it is a long and difficult task for these dedicated parents. So, I am reaching out to you, our Alumni, to try to help us out.”

One donor said he still remembers playing on his first Birchmount football team in 1964, the year the school opened, and wants current students to have the same opportunity.

But on Wednesday, the appeal was taken down abruptly.

“I have had to end this fundraising attempt,” Rhora posted on a Birch Cliff Community Facebook group. “I hope to be able to resolve this situation and will do everything I can to make Birchmount Football a reality.”

Bird, speaking on behalf of Birchmount principal Karen Hume, said this isn’t a sign that the school has closed the door on football: “To be clear, we’re not opposed to having fundraising for equipment.” The issue is that GoFundMe is not a board-approved method.

Nathan Wilson, 14, just finished the school’s rugby season (Rhora coaches that team as well) and said he would love a shot at football.

“I got to meet a lot of new people and it brought a lot of us together,” he said of the rugby team. “And we made it pretty far — we made it to the playoffs.”

Strudwicke, who is in Grade 10, hopes something gets worked out in time for next year.

“I do know (helmets) are pretty expensive and they cost a lot of money to get recertified, or get new helmets as needed. But I feel like something should be done to help out with that, especially because Birchmount is known for being like a big, big sports school.”

Before the pandemic, 99,000 elementary school students and 31,000 in secondary schools played sports in Toronto, said George Kourtis, health and physical education program co-ordinator for the Toronto District School Board.

Cost is not the only challenge. Finding teachers to coach, and supply teachers to replace them when they miss classes for games, is increasingly difficult, Kourtis added. The high cost of many community sports means that school sports are the only option for some kids.

The value of students being physically active and engaging with others has been proven to have real academic benefits, Kourtis said: “It’s the No. 1 student success program that we have.”

Kerry Gillespie is a Toronto-based sports reporter for the Star. Reach her via email: kgillespie@thestar.ca