This is the first week of spring sports practices, and there are already problems between the girls’ and boys’ lacrosse teams. While the girls’ team received a weekly schedule, the boys’ team has been going day by day, learning the next day’s practice the night before. Already, problems are bubbling up. On the first day of practice, both teams were booked at the same time on the same field. This meant they would have to split or share the fields at Indian River. This has been an issue in the past years, but this year it is especially hard since both of the teams are larger in size.
Emerson Dunning, junior on the girls lacrosse team, said ‘ Well, it’s unfortunate that our teams split the field because the beginning of the season is one of the most important times in the season, and not getting to practice clearing is a problem.”
On paper, splitting the turf doesn’t sound bad. But if you actually play high school lacrosse, you know that splitting the only good field at our school is a nightmare. Here is what is happening behind the scenes.
At the moment, the girls’ team has practice from 2:45- 4:45, and the boys go from 3:45- 5:30, so for around an hour of practice, the girls and the boys split the turf mostly at the beginning of the boys’ practice. The girls have had every single early practice, while the boys have been staying on the late rotation.
Because everyone gets out of school at the same time, someone has to take the late practice slot. If you’re the team with the late slot time of practice starting at 3:45 – 6:30 pm, your entire evening is spent on showering, homework, eating dinner, and then going to sleep because it’s already after 9 pm by the time you have time for yourself. Also, fatigue can be a major problem with those practices, which makes you not want to do your homework because you’re so tired.
Although the girls have started with the early time this year, they dealt with this same issue last year. Dunning said that constantly shifting between 2:30 and 6:30 PM practices last season messed up her sleep and homework schedules.
Most of the week, the athletic department double-books the turf so both teams practice at the same time on opposite halves. Lacrosse is a full-field game. It’s all about fast breaks, clearing the ball, and long passes. When you chop the field in half, drills are ruined; you can’t run full-field clearing drills. Safety issues, lacrosse balls would constantly be flying from the boys’ side over to the girls’ side, which is a safety hazard since the girls don’t wear helmets.
What should our school do? No one is saying the boys deserve the turf more than the girls or vice versa. Both teams work hard, and both programs want to win. But if we are going to step up. We need an equal rotation so no one is stuck on the late shift for a whole week.
Maybe this is the time for the Board of Education and the Town to evaluate the condition of the Track and Football field at Ethel Peters, as they are both in need of major repairs. Currently, the right side (facing the opponents bleachers) is torn to pieces. There are junks of grass out with holes across several places on the field. If we are going to repair them, let’s do it right and replace the football field with turf. This wouldnt just help the lacrosse teams, it would also help the football team; then we won’t have the issues we are having, and we will continue to have.
Although there is a cost involved in replacing it with turf; however, it would be valuable to do a pros and cons. Valley Regional High School recently replaced its football field with a turf field. The total renovation cost around $9,966,000, and around $4,605,000 was allicated for replacing the grass with turf according to “Public Hearing Wednesday, 3/29, 7 pm at JWMS.”
In the big picture, the investment they made will cost them less in the future as costly repairs won’t be needed, filling in worn-out spots in the grass and leveling it so no one gets hurt. In the meantime, we must find a solution by splitting the field between the two teams to avoid safety issues with someone without a helmet getting hit by the ball.
