Battle for Funds: Idaho public schools seeking thousands from high school football event
Three high schools due $11,500 in total
TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — It’s been nearly a year since the Battle in Boise, an event featuring three high school football games at Albertsons Stadium.
For most athletes, playing on The Blue is all but a dream, but three of the schools who played are feeling blue, now a year later, as they are out thousands of dollars due to a lack of payment from the event’s sponsor.
“It just feels totally out of our control and it’s frustrating,” explained Ashley Holt, former athletic director at Emmett High School.
“You know we got to a point where we knew we weren’t going to get it,” said Kris Knowles, the athletic director at Vallivue High School.
These Idaho high school athletic directors all share the same concern.
“We need to be paid,” exclaimed, Mark Mace, athletic director at Oakley High School.
Oakley High School is seeking $2,000, Emmett agreed on $3,500, while Vallivue is waiting on $6,000.
$11,500 in total that’s missing out of the athletic budgets at three Idaho public schools.
“A big thing for me was to make sure we got money because it’s a home game for us as we were losing out on gate, on concessions,” Holt explained. “So that was big thing that I asked for and lets come up with an agreement that for everybody.”
It’s being called an overdue business transaction, at least in our conversation with Battle in Boise sponsor, Southern Solar Pros and owner, Cody Heward.
According to an agreement signed by the company, the Idaho Football Coaches Association and the three home teams. Each one agreed to receive a flat rate or the gate revenue they would typically earn at an average home game, minus the fees for officials.
Heward, who didn’t want to go on camera told us back in July he was in the middle of selling his company and said funds will continue to be frozen until the sale is final.
But the athletic directors say they’ve heard this before.
“I mean it started within a couple of weeks after the game, just simply texting Cody, just saying hey when are we going to see the funds for this and it just kind of progressed down this interesting rabbit hole of ‘hey, the business has been sold, or this has happened or the funds will be available at this time’. It started in October, went through the new year, went through the spring and we haven’t received the money,” Knowles said.
Since then the schools say communication has been lacking.
“I probably called once a week for like eight weeks and sometimes left voicemails, sometimes not, nothing,” Holt said.
For Emmett, the Huskies only had four home games on the schedule in 2023, including the Battle in Boise contest against rival Fruitland. without these promised funds. Emmett athletics only collected revenue from three total games and that’s causing a domino effect.
“We rely on home football games for a lot of revenue and they kind of help in Emmett especially, keep our non-revenue sports alive,” Holt said.
That’s forcing athletic directors to make sacrifices for the betterment of their programs.
“We weren’t able to buy necessary equipment for programs like we have in the past,” Holt added.
“We try to focus on the needs of students,” Mace explained. “We try to keep things pretty conservative. For us it’s going to be officials, costs, state hotel rooms, that is the biggest cost for our athletic department as a whole.”
Now that we are in the new sports season, these schools have a message.
“It’s not me as athletic director or anybody else potentially being hurt by this, it’s the opportunity for kids,” Knowles said.
“The schools that we’re involved need this money and we want to put this behind us and get paid,” Mace added.
The athletic directors say they’ve learned their lesson of always putting a timeframe for payment in any signed document.
There’s no word yet if they will take legal action.
Again we spoke with Cody Heward who is waiting to release the funds following the sale of his solar company.
Stay with us as we continue to follow this story.
Video highlights of Emmett-Fruitland, courtesy of KTVB.
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