Quinton Pressley is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Desert Mountain High School for AZPreps365.com.

Desert Mountain High School’s wardrobe is as elite as its athletic program. 

For not having the luxury of brand sponsorships, the Wolves always come ready to play looking clean. This is because the Athletic Director Stephen Cervantez, and coaches put in a lot of time and effort to ensure Desert Mountain athletes have the best gear.

Although money is made out of paper, the funds for these uniforms do not grow on trees. 

“It comes from a couple of places, it comes from participation fees…sports capital money that is allotted to us by the district, and it comes from game fees,” said Cervantez.

Since Desert Mountain has such a prominent athletic program, the turnout in the bleachers is always high. Still, like almost every other high school in the country, the Wolves are very dependent on the revenue produced from football and boys basketball.

“Our big gate money maker is football…second would be boys basketball…girls/boys soccer brings in a decent amount, but all the rest of the sports survive off of football and basketball,” said Cervantez.

The Scottsdale Unified School District has agreed that each sport will receive new jerseys every three years. All five high schools combine their gate receipts at the end of every year and split it five ways evenly. 

This allows affordable and quality apparel to keep cycling throughout the athletic programs.

Although Cervantez wishes they could provide new threads every season, it’s not feasible with the current uniform market. 

“I think it has to do with inflation…there’s a problem with the supply chain after COVID, so that made it harder for them to give us uniforms.” 

Exactly how expensive can jerseys be you might ask? Well, to supply every player on the football team it runs the wolfpack about 45-50,000 dollars. 

Sports like baseball and softball both usually cost around two-three thousand dollars while both soccer programs rack up to about nine thousand dollars.

Spending all this money at once would cause a financial catastrophe, so differing programs are on opposing replacement schedules. For example, one year will be solely focused on football, the next will include both soccer and basketball programs, and then on. 

For the upcoming 2024-25 school year the basketball and soccer programs are next in line for their new look. 

Although the school covers the cost, the designs are completely up to the individual teams.

“The coaches will meet with their kids that are going to be seniors or upperclassmen and they go over what uniforms they are going to pick and which brand they want, the kids get a very good input,” said Cervantez.