With the return of warmer weather, nicer conditions and spring sports another commonality of the spring has returned to LT—a lack of practice space. As all levels of spring sports teams return to play, the majority of the teams are looking to get time outside—on LT’s one turf field—Bennett Field.
In the fall, only two sports compete for time out on Bennett, boy’s soccer, and football. In the spring, however, seven teams—boys and girls lacrosse, girls soccer, softball, baseball and girls and boys track and field—compete for a condensed amount of available space, resulting in teams being resigned to practice in some unorthodox locations like the gyms, and even the parking lots.
The Vaughan gym being converted into a cafeteria for the majority of the year has restricted the amount of space that volleyball, badminton, and girls soccer have access to, moving teams to SC for practice, and shrinking everyone’s available space.
“[Vaughan] is a great space for all of those sports to be able to use, and we haven’t been able to do it because of the cafeteria relocation,” athletic director John Grundke said. “We’re looking forward to construction being over and being able to move everything back over to NC. Even at SC some coaches have less space than usual, because we sent volleyball over because we have no space at NC for those teams.”
While this year’s amount of available space is smaller than usual, Grundke said that coaches and players are no less understanding, and appreciate any space that they can get, even when that means being relocated to the farthest plot of grass, or out on the drivers education range.
“We’ve been using that drivers education course for years, and people don’t like it,” he said. “But at least it’s giving you an opportunity to work, and do activities as opposed to just watching a video, or running or just sending everybody home early.”
And sports do find a way to get any bit of practice in, especially at the beginning of the season, baseball player Chris Cooper ‘15 said. If they can’t get space outside, watching film while working on both physical and mental conditioning are a common practice among most teams.
“We just adjust to the adversity and find a way to get some sort of practice in,” he said. “Either conditioning in the hallways, hitting in the upstairs gym or even talking over some areas we can improve in.”
One proposed solution to the lack of available space in the spring is the creation of a turf field at NC in the space at West Fields. However, after contacting architects and getting price estimates, this solution has been delayed, because there are 100-year-old pipes beneath each field, and the threat that they may burst is too risky, Grundke said.
“It is extremely expensive, but it’s not just the cost,” he said. “There are some pipes that go underneath the fields that are about 100 years old, if we were to put a turf field on there, there is no guarantee that those pipes wouldn’t burst and then we’d have to tear up the new turf field in order to replace those.”
Although there is a distinct lack of space for spring sports to practice in at the beginning of the season, coaches and players are typically very understanding and appreciate the facilities that LT does offer.
“We have great facilities here,” Grundke said. “I think that sometimes people tend to forget that, but we’ve got the sports facilities that some small colleges aren’t privileged enough to have.”