Phillip Ogle, Total Sports Development (TSD) president and Thurston County Youth Football League’s (TCYFL) Yelm Tornados franchise head coach, went before Yelm City Council members on Tuesday, Sept. 3, in search of financial support from the city.
Ogle seeks $15,000 in order to pay TCYFL expenses for the 2024 season. The money to TCFYL helps the Yelm Tornados franchise allow the young athletes to play on scholarship. The Yelm City Council will use its discretion in whether or not the local organizations that took the podium during the Sept. 3 meeting will receive the funding requested.
“Historically, it’s been a little bit easier for us to scholarship children because [TCYFL] allowed me to bill the [families], and I could have them slow pay or pay me over a period of time. This year, they took over the process, so the parents had to pay or I had to pay up front,” Ogle said. “The team would have to pay upfront for the child’s uniform, for example, a cheer uniform — they’d have to pay $150 for registration and $300 for uniform. That’s difficult for a lot of parents, especially in our community.”
In addition to the fees owed to the league, Ogle said practice locations are going to become more expensive as site fees are set to increase at Yelm Community Schools facilities. Ogle said TSD was originally created in order to ensure funds secured benefit athletes in the community, directly.
“I started Total Sports Development because we’re part of the Thurston County Youth Football League. Every time we’d fundraise, or I’d go to a tribe, and so forth, to get funds, sometimes some of those funds would have to be appropriated to Thurston County Youth Football League,” he said. “They’re taking a portion of what we’re trying to get back to our own kids, and the board and I just said, ‘Why don’t we do this ourselves?’”
He added that athletes don’t have a lot of indoor sports facilities available within Thurston County. With TSD and other local organizations hosting competitive sporting events in Yelm, Ogle sees a need for facility availability in Yelm.
“We see a very large need for our kids. It gets cold, and I run a competitive sevens football team in the offseason. We have competition cheer that will start after sideline cheer is over. Those spaces are in need, especially as I sit in a school district office and negotiate contracts with Mr. [Superintendent Chris] Woods, and seeing what’s going to happen with the fee structure, it’s going to directly impact a lot of organizations that utilize school property,” Ogle said. “Many kids in our community, as you guys have seen, are going off to college and we want to keep that rolling.”
Ogle added that TSD is a year-round sports organization, and, eventually, the long-term goal is to create an indoor sports facility in Yelm. He said the facility would not only attract local athletes within Yelm, but athletes from throughout the South Puget Sound region.
Ogle said Yelm High School (YHS) hosted a 7-on-7 tournament earlier in the year where 100 football teams from outside of Yelm competed at YHS.
“I would like [the facility] to be in the city limits of Yelm. That partly affects our local athletes. We know in building it, we’re going to bring some revenue into Yelm,” Ogle said. “The local businesses feel the impact. We’ll have two of those [tournaments] this year. We’ll have a tackle tournament this November, and 30 teams will come in. It’s a longer play time. Next calendar year, we’ll have two additional 7-on-7 tournaments come, and that will be about 100 teams apiece coming in. We’ll have teams from Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii that all fly in to play in these regionalized tournaments.”
He added that 52 athletes from outside of Yelm tried out for TSD’s 7-on-7 team and other businesses will benefit as non-residents continue to come to the city for TSD practices and events.
According to Ogle, TSD has done feasibility studies on several pieces of property that could potentially serve as TSD’s home.
“The board is looking at that and going back to our financial investors because this would be all out-of-town money. We have some great contacts within the NFL world that would really love to see an indoor facility,” Ogle said. “When we talk about an indoor facility, we’re talking about something where if you would take Yelm High School, everything from the track in. It’s roughly 600 feet long and 400 feet wide. It’s what is deemed a temporary structure, but there’s temperature and climate control.”
