Home games, priced out: Oceanside Pop Warner’s dilemma
After national championship wins, leaders warn rental costs at OUSD stadiums are forcing home games out of the city and straining finances for hundreds of families
OCEANSIDE — Weeks after winning two national Pop Warner Super Bowls, Oceanside Pop Warner leaders say the program is struggling to afford skyrocketing field rental fees from the Oceanside Unified School District.
The youth football and cheer programs serve more than 300 kids, but leaders worry about the cost of roughly $7,000 per home game, which threatens the league’s financial stability and forces games outside the city.
Oceanside Pop Warner is trying to work with OUSD over rental fees for fields at local schools for home games, according to OPW President Andrew Tapuloa. The league includes divisions for kids ages 5 to 14, with five cheerleading squads. The U13 and U14 teams won the Super Bowls, while the under-11 team finished second.
Tapuloa said OPW raised $40,000 to send three teams to North Carolina and that annual operational costs have surged since 2021.
He said OUSD now charges about $7,000 per home game to rent the stadium at Oceanside or El Camino high schools. There are standalone fees for the field, bathrooms, concession stand, lights, press box and scoreboard, which allows for a mix of options, but Tapuloa said it’s difficult not to offer bathrooms, a concession stand or scoreboard.
The league must also pay officials, typically $65 to $85 per official, per game, plus $600 per day for medics. Referee costs alone can run between $1,300 and $1,700 for a five-game slate, pushing the total cost of a home game to nearly $9,000.
The cost for each player to participate in the league is $675 per year, Tapuloa said, and any cost increases would jeopardize the future of the league. The fees include uniforms, equipment, officials, rental fees for games, and reimbursements for away games, to name a few costs.
“We just try to make it work with what we have,” he added. “We try to rent out the stadiums, but with the scorching costs, we just couldn’t afford that. I brought it up, and they (the district) said they called around and it was a fair price. I said, ‘Fair to who?’”
Thanks to the cost increases, OPW had one home game this year, at Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School, and three at the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad at a cheaper rate. Parent Megan Barnett, whose son Carson played on the U11 team, said it’s unacceptable for OPW to play home games in another city.
She said the program played five home games each of the previous two seasons, and zero four seasons ago. However, the costs continue to be a barrier to access, Barnett said.
