In all of the years HPHS has been opened, the facilities have remained closed to the public. However, on Saturday, Mar. 28, 2026, the track and field of HPHS was opened to the public for the first time through efforts of the HP Run Club.
The HP Run Club is a community running and walking group that was founded in April 2024 by Iris Delgado. The club originally started for the reason of running and building a community. It began with only a couple of runners, but quickly expanded to hundreds of members.
As the club experienced growth, the purpose of the club also grew into advocating for the safety of runners. They now bring awareness of the importance of safer roads and sidewalks. They hope to ensure that all runners can freely and safely use their shared spaces.
The HP Run Club began their journey of opening the track and field to the public in early 2025. They embarked on this journey in order to create a new, easily accessible safe place for the community to use for running.
The club would often experience visitors from outside the city that would invite them to their own club. From the visits to these other clubs, the HP Run Club noticed these clubs were using their own local high school’s track and field. The HP Run Club soon made the realization that HP has a nice track that is usable and embarked on their journey.
“We just needed a safe place to run…Having a really nice track here in your city, why not use it?” said Christian Vasquez, a core member since the club first began.
The process of opening the track and field proved to be difficult and long. As it has never been done before and the HP Run Club is only a club run by community members. Their status of being only a club brought many difficulties as it brought liabilities, required insurance and permits.
However, the greatest challenge the HP Run Club faced was getting LAUSD, HPHS, HP City, and themselves in communication to reach agreements. The city was the most cooperative and assisted the club in applying for permits. While LAUSD and HPHS needed more convincing due to the uniqueness of the proposition and potential risks.
“The biggest challenge was trying to convince the principal to make it happen,” said Christian Vasquez.
There were many concerns of opening the track and field to the public as any person could have access to the campus. It would run the risk of people getting injured, campus being damaged or even students being endangered. However, despite these risks, Principal Garibaldi wasn’t reluctant to the proposition.
“I thought it was a great idea…Cooperative as I can.” said Principal Garibaldi .
Principal Garibaldi was supportive of the idea and after convincing, ended up being cooperative with the HP Run Club. Although they had the cooperation of the HPHS, it only went so far as they still needed civic center permits to be able to use the track and field. It turned into a long process of a year and half, but the persistence of the HP Run Club eventually led to the track and field of HPHS being opened up to the public.
The track and field are open to the public on Monday from 7pm – 9pm and Saturday from 8am – 11am. Despite only being open for a couple hours, during this time, the track is filled with runners from across the HP community.
The HP Run Club accomplished their goals of creating a safe, easily accessible running space in a community that is in fear of political views ongoing but also providing free exercising space to a community high in obesity. They are proud to be the first to open the HPHS track and field and to successfully provide to their community many grew up in.
The HPHS track and field is expected to be opened to the public until the end of the year due to renovations of the field occurring in 2027. However, the HP Run Club hopes to work with the city, LAUSD, and HPHS again to further sustain their success in the future.
Written by Sebastian Portillo, Features Editor