The football field has been temporarily closed for new repairs and renovations by the Environmental Health and Safety Department since the summer.
Due to this catastrophe, the football and cross country teams, as well as other upcoming sports such as soccer, have encountered a huge obstacle which results in them not having a field or track to practice on. The football and cross country season already kicked off this school year. The first football game away was on August 17 against Rosemead High School and it will end with the last game on October 26 against South Gate High school.
This year’s varsity head coach for the football team, Vince Gallegos, believes that the timing of the repairs is, in fact, intervening with the football season.
“It kinda sucks, honestly, because it’s like hard to do what we got to do. You know it’s hard to practice on there. It’s hard to know where we line up and stuff like that,” commented Coach Vince.
Cross Country coach and Leadership Advisor, Louis Bonsteel, also has similar thoughts.
“It’s really hard because one thing I can practice on is distance, which is great, but I need to practice on speed but I can’t work on speed without a track,” commented Bonsteel.
The Huntington Park field has remained unused since the beginning of the 2018-19 school year.
According to Principal Garibaldi, the construction physically began on August 27, but the actual process of the field getting fixed started about a year ago. Since then, a series of procedures had to be taken into action.
“My first week here, I reported it to the district saying I had concerns regarding the condition. We made various reports, and various attempts, the district didn’t get on it until it was closed by the office of environmental health and safety,” commented Principal Garibaldi.
The decision and pressure from a federal organization led the LAUSD district to invest an enormous amount of money into making the field safe for the football team to play on it. Mr. Garibaldi announced that the repairs should be finished by September 17, but the field won’t be officially open until a second inspection is made in order to confirm that it is safe.
If things go according to plan, there should be the first home football game here on campus on October 5, against Roosevelt High school.
Written by Angelisa Villa, Staff Writer
Image provided by Huntington Park Yearbook.