Hamilton has undergone a lot of changes in the first semester of school, from closing down bathrooms, and protests, and the removal of the beautiful but old football stadium. Except the football field at Hamilton isn’t just for the football team during the spring. The girls’ and boys’ soccer teams practice and play there, the classic-looking track that is covered with dirt is used by cross country and track and field, and the school’s incredible marching band also practices outside on the grass of the football field. Also, in the corner of the football field lies the softball field, which is where the girls practice and play. With the school grounds under construction, all of these activities are stripped away, and all of those teams are now being pushed onto the baseball field or even farther away.
From the varsity baseball team, Jose Marroquin, a senior in BIT, explained how everyone being pushed onto his field has affected him and his teammates. “Honestly I think it’s really taking away time from the baseball team,” he said. “We can’t really use it productively as we were supposed to, you know. But yeah, I think it’s really going to affect our season a lot, take away a lot of hitting from us, we can’t really expand our field.”
The baseball team has had to take the brunt of the quick change because they are the only place left with grass that isn’t being currently touched by construction.
His teammate Jacole Wilson goes on to explain, “We don’t got as much practice as we should be getting, we’ve been having to practice on concrete and yea, I don’t really like it. We’ve been dealing with it all semester and everyone is always trying to come onto our field.”
The boys’ baseball tryouts were postponed by a week because of the chaotic scene occurring on their field.
These effects are felt by the soccer team and marching band as well. The soccer team is currently in season and are feeling the effects of not having their field. I talked to Angelike Tecuapa, a sophomore in the AMPA program, playing on the JV soccer team. I asked how she has felt the effects of the field being torn down and she told me that, “Our home games are at Webster where there are no lights. The field is horrible, trashy, there’s mud, the grass is not maintained, it’s so bad, there’s no bleachers, it’s really bad.” She expanded on how close all the different teams are and said, “We’re limited to one corner and it’s even worse because we’re JV, so our game time gets shortened so much, we don’t even get time to score, to get our subs in, to do anything.”
Obviously, the team is at an extreme disadvantage because of the current construction, seemingly taking away their chances of a good season. After that, I checked in with band member Rosie Hernandez, a senior in AMPA, and wanted to hear about the marching band and how they are dealing with the move since they need so much space to practice. Rosie says, “It’s definitely been a little bit difficult because we are on the baseball field with baseball, sometimes the football girls, or soccer as well, and we do have our own area but it’s difficult when we’re trying to do stuff and the balls fly over to us, which is fine for the most part but it does affect how we do our drill and we have to be extra careful for flags.”
I talked to Mr. Fawcett after I spoke to the soccer girls since he helps supervise their class and has seen them fight through the season. He says, “The field is long overdue for renovations, but it is preventing us P.E. teachers from working with our classes.”
I finally talked to some of the softball team. Since the beginning of the semester, the softball team has been at a disadvantage when it comes to preparing for their upcoming spring season. Practices were already hard to come by because of the football season. Right after the team was done, the soccer team took priority of the field as soon as the season was done, and shortly after that it was Thanksgiving break and the team came back and there was dirt completely eating up their field. I talked to sophomore Taryn Hill in AMPA, who said, “I feel like it’s a lot of work, there’s a lot of stress on where we’re going to practice, we don’t know where we’re going to be for our home games, it’s just stressful.” The softball team had a total of 3 field practices during the first semester of school and were forced to rush through their tryouts.
Last I talked to 10th grader Yasim Santiago about how she felt about their field being impeded on and she said, “We need to practice of course, and we can’t do that, we don’t have our field so we don’t have home games and that’s a big thing for us as well. If there’s no home games there’s no Hami Pride.”
