No field, no lights
SUHSD provides portable lights to sports
Various sports and extracurriculars utilize the soccer field after school due to the construction taking place at the football field. The portable lights active once the sun goes down.
December 11, 2021
Due to daylight-savings time (DST) coming to an end on Nov. 7, portable light generators have been set up on the soccer field at Bonita Vista High (BVH) for sports teams. The athletic department in the Sweetwater Union High School District (SUHSD) office was contacted in order to acquire these temporary portable lights.
Athletic Director and Head football coach Tyler Arciaga “forecasted” the need for lights due to DST, in addition to construction on the track and football field. Without the lights, student-athletes would have their practices cut shorter due to the sun-setting around five o’clock.
This influences BVH teams like football, lacrosse, soccer, field hockey and track, as their games are typically held on the football field.
— Isabella Garcia
Due to construction, they must play on other fields which don’t have any built-in lighting. Arciaga hopes next year all teams will be able to take advantage of the track and football stadium by holding home games.
“Soccer, lacrosse, field hockey and track, they’re all going to be having their home games on this field [BVH football field]” Arciaga said. “Freshman and JV football, then varsity football, it’ll be determined based on the capacity limits, as we may have to play at Southwestern [college] because there’s limited capacity here [at BVH].”
Assistant Principal of Student Activities, Christopher Alvarez, and Arciaga began the process of obtaining the portable lights by contacting the district’s athletic department office, in order to present the issue. The dilemma was introduced to Athletics Program Coordinator, Alex Estrada, at the district office.
“We [Alvarez and Arciaga] presented the dilemma [the demand for lights because of DST] to Mr. Estrada, he understood,” Alvarez said.
Schools within the district contacted Estrada to handle the portable lights. Since the lights are for outdoor sports, this is a part of his job. Some SUHSD schools are facing lighting problems whether its construction, end of DST or lighting issues in general. For BVH, all three problems are tied to the focal issue of student-athletes not having enough light to practice and play games. However, the current issue impacting student-athletes is that DST ended.
“Having lights allows us [coaches] to extend the amount of time and usage [of the soccer field],” Arciaga said. “Especially during daylight savings time for all the outdoor sports since we don’t have a [football field] or track, and we don’t have a real auxiliary field.”
The district helps schools such as BVH by funding the total cost of the lights—from renting them to paying for their fuel.
“It’s in our budget, it’s an added expense to anything we do [at the district],” Estrada said. The district works with Otay Mesa Sales—the company that the portable lights are rented from.
Arciaga and Estrada previously arranged for four portable light generators. Not long after, they discussed the need for more lights due to a referee shortage for soccer. Arciaga and Estrada coordinated four more portable lights to arrive at the beginning of August bringing a total of eight lights to the soccer field at BVH.
“[Portable lights have] a positive [effect on sports teams],” Alvarez said. “It gets dark about five, even earlier than that and having the portable lights helps the teams practice a little longer.”
In addition to the shortage of referees for soccer, these portable lights currently hold an impact on both boys’ and girls’ soccer.
“For soccer, they can’t send [referees into the game]. We used to have three games going on at once so they would send us 4 referees, 2 for the varsity, 1 for the JV, 1 for the novice,” Arciaga said. “Now they’re only sending us two referees so we can only play one game at a time, and so we’re going to utilize the lights.”
With help from the portable lights, BVH soccer teams will be able to hold home games, even when they play after the sunsets.
“It’ll [the portable lights] give them [soccer teams] a more normalized practice time and with our limited facilities it keeps them here. We had to move soccer last year,” Arciaga said.
This school year, sports practices are held later in the day, with the latest change of BVHs start and end time.
“One of the drawbacks to the late start time, especially in the winter, [is that you] don’t have the daylight,” Arciaga said. “Having the lights allows us to do that, so teams don’t have to practice at five in the morning just [to] get a decent practice in. Otherwise, they’d be going out there for forty five, fifty minutes and that’s their practice.”
Since these portable lights are temporary, they are only going to be on the soccer field for a few more months, or even until March when DST starts up again. The hope is for the portable lights to remain at BVH for only a couple of months until there’s more daylight in the afternoon.
“The ultimate goal would be providing these lights that offer up extra practice areas and space for all our teams to practice,” Estrada said. “Why do schools have to make decisions that we cut programs or teams because we don’t have fields for them to practice. We provide lights and make arrangements [so they can] have an extra two hours of practice time. It’s a matter of getting student-athletes on the field.”
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Mr. Gervais • Dec 17, 2021 at 10:02 am
Portable lighting is a minimal must but it has been for more than 50 years. Finally the district recognizes that this site is lacking lighting on the athletic fields.
Our campus has been a pre-Title IX campus for ages. The original field space developed in the late 1960s planned for Male sports. Since our beginning we have only doubled our sports teams with the inclusion of female sports but still no added space. And no lighting outside. Therefore, since our inception, this campus has gone dark when the sun sets. No other campus in our district suffers that fate. It is amazing the successes our field teams have had over the years with this major barrier stunting our growth. Our successes can be consider major feats especially in female sports successes; Cross Country, Soccer, & Softball have runs of dominance in their respective histories.
It’s well past time the district equalizes the playing field (literally). I hope those portable lights stay on campus even after the construction, as these same sports still need practice areas while other teams use the new facility for games. When Field Hockey plays on the turf, the football teams will need the portable lights; when girls soccer has the field for games, boys soccer may need the portables, While Track and Field uses the track, LaCross, boys and girls will need the portables. Insert band and its auxilleries needing field time and you see the need for lighted space on top of the new construction.
Baseball and softball both field Three teams each but have only one field to play on. Lights would alleviate this continuous log jam. As it is these two sports have to share their space with all other field sports throughout the year.
With that said, the next project, perhaps led by a Sports Foundation coalition of all these teams & Band can focus on raising the funds needed for permanent lights on the fields surrounding the athletic fields across the entire school grounds. I am almost sure that would also increase the security of the school overall.
My two cents.