Team conflicts complicate football, soccer practices

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:25:10 GMT

By Erica Trevino

Mia Torres

The new football field is surely a significant piece for rising school spirit; however, the field also creates new obstacles for teams. “There are always difficulties when multiple teams practice on one field,” soccer coach Jim Marrone said. “Both teams (football and soccer) didn’t get their full practices.” Soccer had many different practice locations, which created difficult obstacles. On Mondays and Tuesdays the turf field would be divided between both varsity and junior varsity teams. Thursdays practice would be held at John Tyler Elementary School. More problems arose halfway through the season when, according to Marrone, four junior varsity players were mugged while walking to practice. “Administration told us JV could no longer practice at Tyler because it was unsafe,” Marrone said. Instead of putting players in danger, JV would spend the rest of Thursday practices sharing the field behind the P-wing with the freshman and junior varsity football teams. “Who wants to share a field with another team?” Ivan Contreras, senior, said. “It just doesn’t feel like yours.” Though having one field caused conflicts with practice times, compromises had to be made. “It’s funny,” assistant soccer coach Kyle Dei Rossi said. “We spent all this money to build a new field and we still have to make accommodations.” However, head varsity football coach Don Norton said “We shared a field with soccer, and it worked out okay.” It seems that these constant adjustments during the fall season greatly affected both teams. “When you don’t have consistency you always end up having issues,” Marrone said. Though the season consisted of numerous obstacles Marrone doesn’t feel the challenges are to blame for the result of their season. While the soccer team saw these challenges as distractions for players and affected the team negatively, the football team wasn’t finding it as hard to adjust to the complications they faced. “We all knew that this was going to happen,” assistant varsity coach Roger Esparza said. “It didn’t take us long to adjust.” In fact, some football players saw a change that influenced motivation in their teammates. “During the summer we had to move to night practices and I think we had more energy because it was cooler,” one of the varsity captains Francisco Ortigoza, senior, said. Though this year was full of conflicts and confusion, coaches saw this as a situation in which that they had to encounter. “This was the first year we have the stadium,” Esparza said. “Next year the construction will be done and there will be enough room for everyone.” After the completion of the parking lot and baseball fields the practice areas will be worked on to ensure that every sport has enough room.

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Team conflicts complicate football, soccer practices