“SHARED ATHLETIC FACILITIES INTERRUPTING PRACTICE DRILLS”

So+many+sport+so+little+space+

So many sport so little space

At 3:30 o’clock in the afternoon the soccer team is doing practice drills until you hear WATCH OUT! A brown football spinning through the air landing in between the soccer drills having to start all over again. Players are already tired, thirsty, and weak. Not being able to listen to the coach’s drill explanation, confusion on whistles, and limited exercise are just a few problems for players and having shared athletic facilities for multiple teams for a small school. 

Every week there are practice days. Everyone changed into proper practice uniforms and went out on the field getting ready to get the afternoon started. Everyone running their laps, finishing exhausted and drinking water. Coach calls us to the field and we start shooting around and passing the ball to each other. After our warmup we start doing drills and the coach calls me up to start the drill, I hear the whistle blow and I start running until I hear “come back” and then I notice it was the football whistle that went off and I have to start the drill all over again.

After all these years schools are still having problems renting out fields so teams can practice in peace. Because of this teams are forced to share fields and school budgets were cut by 2% at 30.8% of those schools. Mid and large schools have a bigger budget cut mid (43%) and large is (48.1%). (Austin, 2011)If the budgets of bigger and smaller schools are being cut. One can only assume that MLA isn’t the only school with these financial and shared field problems.

While you think that sharing fields is good because two teams are practicing together so you don’t have to wait for each other to finish, the fact is that it interrupts team drills and there is a loss of exercise. 

According to Austin, sixty-one percent of large-school athletic directors said they expect fundraising to be a “significant contributor moving forward.”That number falls into 56.8% at mid-size schools and 50% at the small schools. So, more athletic directors are waiting to see an increase in fundraising in the future.

Athletic teams are sharing fields and being interrupted by teams. If we had a bigger budget this wouldn’t be a problem and practice would be simple and athletes will get their work in.