The Avonworth-Northgate wrestling program is the latest target of school officials looking for ways to trim their budgets.

Wrestling is one of four cooperative sports programs shared by the two local school districts because neither has enough students to support its own teams. The other sports, for which the districts split the costs evenly, are golf, swimming and track.

A recent meeting of administrators from both districts produced what Avonworth superintendent Dr. Valerie McDonald termed a "collaborative agreement" to eliminate wrestling for a number of reasons.

Participation in wrestling has been low. Coach Todd Ford said that the varsity team had 14 members before early season injuries reduced that number to nine. The middle school team had 18 members.

Because the student population of both schools is used to determine the class in which the team competes, the small Avonworth-Northgate team competes against much larger, AAA schools, and loses many meets because it must forfeit matches when the team has no wrestler in that particular weight class. Despite that, Ford said, the team generally remains competitive with a record of just under .500. That could improve next year, Ford said, when the team can drop a class and compete in AA. He noted that five of 12 varsity wrestlers last year competed at the WPIAL level.

There also has been a problem finding assistant coaches, according to Avonworth School Board president David Oberdick.

Finally there is the cost of the program, for which each district spent $12,500 in the 2008-09 school year, according to Avonworth director of finance Brad Waters. The inability to fill two assistant coaching positions during the 2009-10 school year reduced the cost, Waters said.

A group of people interested in seeing wrestling continue spoke at the Avonworth School Board meeting Monday night, stating the program had value to the students who participated and filled a gap in the athletic program.

"Not everybody can be a basketball player," said Marita Bartholomew, a member of the Northgate School Board whose son is a wrestler.

"Any size person can wrestle," said Ford, who added thatwrestling teaches youths to deal with one-on-one challenges in a way they won't learn in team sports.

"It's a great program," said Northgate junior Jacob Ruble, who wrestles for the team.

Ford said that wrestling enabled him to leave a small, blue collar town where job prospects were limited, get a college degree, and become a software engineer. The sport has done the same for area boys, he said.

Bartholomew said that although the Northgate School Board has not yet discussed the proposed program cut, the board's athletic committee did not want to see wrestling eliminated. The Northgate board was expected to discuss the matter at its meeting next Monday.

Avonworth board members opted to wait until after Northgate has made a decision before voting on next year's cooperative sports agreements. Several members, however, had opinions on the issue.

Board member Jeff Schmid said that he had wrestled when he attended Avonworth High School, and that there had been a problem with low numbers and winning meets even at that time. Regardless, he said, the program was valuable and should be continued.

Patrick Stewart reminded the board that budget cuts had to be made in anticipation of the millions of dollars in pension contributions that will be due in the coming years.

"We have massive budget issues coming..." Stewart said. "We need to start planning for this now."

Schmid said that while he gave board members credit for looking for expenses to cut, they were talking about eliminating a $12,500 expenditure for wrestling while moving ahead with an elementary school building project that would cost the district $17 million.

Marybeth Sommers suggested that officials look into whether the wrestling team could compete at a club level without school funding.

Bartholomew said that the wrestling boosters program was interested in helping to raise funds, and had offered to purchase a new mat that would cost about $7,000.

Wrestling is the latest in a series of minor budget cuts proposed by officials in both school districts who are facing funding deficits as well as dramatically increased pension contributions. Northgate has talked about cutting a college trip for students, while Avonworth looked at eliminating its school newspaper in favor of a strictly on-line edition. That idea has been scrapped, at least for the time being, according to McDonald.

The superintendent said that the district has agreed to continue funding the newspaper for the remainder of this year, and next year as well.

“The issue that got us was that the kids would not be able to read the paper during school,” McDonald said, if the paper was not available in print.

She said that the newspaper staff had agreed to turn-over any funds raised to the district to help offset the cost of the paper.

“That shows good faith on their part,” McDonald said.