Township, Sports Clubs Moving Forward on Sponsorships

Once the Moorestown athletic clubs get their sponsorship program off the ground, they may be able to keep a portion of the money they raise.

After dropping off the council agenda for the last couple months, township manager Scott Carew provided an update Monday, telling council he would soon be meeting with the various sports clubs soon to devise a “menu” that could be provided to potential sponsors.

Carew credited the volunteers who have worked on putting the sponsorship program together and told council, “It would be fair, in the first year, to let the clubs take 25 percent of what they raise (to use) as they see fit,” while the rest of the money would go to the township.

Ultimately of course, it’s up to council. Deputy Mayor Greg Gallo, who led Monday’s meeting in Mayor John Button’s absence, didn’t come down one way or another on Carew’s suggestion, but said a sponsorship program is “long overdue. We should have been doing sponsorships for years … There was just a prior perspective (in previous administrations) that folks just didn’t want to go that route.”

Back in April, the Moorestown Youth Baseball Federation (MYBF) and the Moorestown Lacrosse Club (MLC) , respectively.  

Recreation Department director Theresa Miller, who has also been working with Carew and the clubs, declined to say whether those numbers have increased, but said the clubs are “still very interested and very willing to participate.”

The sponsorship commitments reported by MYBF and MLC were to be used toward the athletic fields improvement project, which has been on a hiatus if council moved forward with plans to use the Open Space, Recreation, Farmland and Historic Preservation Trust Fund to pay for field improvements at .

Council has not discussed the project since, but Gallo anticipates the issue will “come to a head soon.”

“For a topic like that, we certainly want to try to have full attendance,” he said, noting the last few council meetings have seen one or two members of council absent. “I certainly want to resolve it.”