At the end of the last school year, the work on the new stadium, football field, and track was finally completed. Students graduated on it, teams practiced on it, and everything seemed to be going well. However, for the teams who don’t use the synthetic turf field, the improvement of the stadium is having little to no effect on their day-to-day activities.
The field hockey, baseball, and softball players don’t use that field at all, with the exception being field hockey games. This means that those teams practice on the upper field — a gopher hole ridden wasteland with dry, uneven ground and occasionally little reptilians. Junior Marcus Avelino commented, “There’s a higher risk of injury. There was a garden snake out there one day.” A common garden snake may not seem like a huge problem, but the possibility that there could be animals lurking in the gopher holes and providing potential health risks to students certainly is.
In addition to the possibility of wild animals roaming around, the astonishing number of gopher holes on the field poses a very real health risk to athletes who practice up there. Several twisted and sprained ankles have occured over the course of the past year, when the football and track teams held their practices on the upper field. “We had to practice for track there the entire year. It was just dangerous because whenever we would do drills our feet could get caught in the holes. It’s a great place to twist your ankle,” said Senior Adrian Nesta. Despite Nesta’s sarcasm, injuries are no joke, even minor ones, and the knowledge that athletes have to return to a field where they have already been hurt just adds insult to injury.
Furthermore, the field isn’t exactly aesthetically pleasing. “The baseball field has always looked good, but as of right now it looks terrible. I don’t want to end my senior year playing on a poor field,” explained Senior Bosque Davis. Davis has a strong point. The dead patches of grass make the field an eyesore, and nobody is going to take a team seriously if they’re playing on a field that looks like it should accompany an elementary school.
All in all, despite the great efforts to give the football team a nice place to play, the upper field has been terribly neglected. Wild animals, uneven ground, and dead grass are not a recipe for success. Even the smallest efforts to make the field more playable would definitely be greatly appreciated.