The Revere Booster Club(s) gave new uniforms for the 2023-2024 school year, for groups such as Women’s Soccer, Cross Country, Football, Band, and more to come.
After a long wait the Revere Marching Band received new uniforms for the 23-24 season. Since the marching band has a separate Booster Club funding program, the cycle for new uniforms is different compared to the athletic uniforms.
Due to the different funding program, the band waited around ten years to get uniforms, compared to the athletic programs waiting around 4-5 years.. Revere’s new band director Tom Chiera explained the wait.
“The life cycle of a uniform is anywhere from eight to ten years. I am pretty confident that the last uniforms lasted nine or ten years,” Chiera said.
Likewise, the women’s soccer team received new uniforms after about a four year wait. For athletics, every fifth year the booster club funds new uniforms for the team. Girls soccer coach, Dave Howson, explains the rotation schedule.
“They have a rotation schedule, [we] used to be on a four or five year rotation, but now we’re going to a four year rotation because the Athletic Director wants everybody to have a new uniform once in a high school career,” said Howson.
This rotation also helps keep every new athletic uniform fair. For example, when it is time for new women’s soccer uniforms, it is also time for new women’s track uniforms, basketball uniforms and swim team warmups. Warmups are uniforms swimmers can wear in the winter months while preparing to get into the pool, items like jackets and sweatpants that are custom to the Revere swim team.
Revere’s athletic director, Don Seeker, explained his policy. Since Seeker came to Revere, he has worked with the athletic booster club to come up with a fair amount of money for each sport.
“Two years ago the booster club came up with an amount per player [100 dollars].” Seeker said.
The funding for the club exists because of fundraisers and concession stands.
“They get their funding through concessions and sponsorship members, that’s pretty much how they [the booster club] raise their money,” Seeker said
On the other hand, the funding for the new womens soccer uniforms went to the jerseys, socks and shorts. Howson explained how the funding for the soccer uniforms can work.
“We [the school] have to pay for over half of the uniform prices, and the Revere Booster Club paid for the other half. It has been this way for about thirteen years, but things might be changing with the new rotation,” Howson said.
If a team wanted to get a third uniform, though, the team would have to pay it out of their own funding. For example, the women’s soccer team would have to fundraise on their own for a warmup similar to the swim team because they used their money from the booster club for their uniforms instead.
Howson said the fun part about uniforms is that coaches and staff have the opportunity to design them. Howson explained how that process ran this year.
“It’s usually down to me, but this year I chose the standard uniform from Nike that we can buy, and we can only get a white one, so this year nothing fancy went on here,” Howson said.
For the band, it was up to the previous director to design this year’s new uniforms, but new director Chiera explained how the process might have run.
“Looking at it there was motivation from past Revere uniforms to maintain identity” Chiera said.
The new routine in uniforms should give at least the sports programs the opportunity to get a new uniform once in their high school careers.
