The school bell rings, hundreds of students are released from class after a hard day of learning. Athletes carry their sports bags to the back of school to change in the bathroom before practice begins. This is the typical scene that happens at 3:15pm at PCS at our current campus, but next year, this scene will change.
As many people already know, PCS plans to move to the new campus by next school year. Although PCS will be upgrading their main campus facilities, sports facilities will not be present on the new campus. There will be no basketball gym or athletics field on site like there is at our current campus.
“We’re not gonna have any sports facilities on the new campus,” said Chris Nestlerode, a science teacher at PCS. “There’s no room for it– or money or time.”
Although the new campus will not have a gym or field on site, PCS sports will continue using the current facilities for at least one more year.
“We will, at least for one year, have the use of this facility for the gym and for the field for practices and games,” said Simon Fletcher, the school principal.
So next year, PCS sports will continue after school but everything will happen at our current campus instead of our new campus. But after next year, the future of sports at PCS is still in question as to where PCS practices and games will take place.
“Beyond the one year, this facility is kinda open,” said Fletcher, “but we hope that we can include fields from other schools; like Mission Hill, Santa Cruz High, and Harbor High. That is something we have to come to an agreement on.”
In two years, PCS will have to to go other schools with sports facilities and ask about entering an agreement where PCS can use their facilities on certain days at certain times.
When asked about home games, Fletcher said that “it would be nice if we could designate a certain gym as our home gym [for] when we host games.”
PCS hopes that an agreement can be made with a school to make their gym the home gym for PCS.
Another issue PCS will have next year regarding sports at the new campus is after school transportation from the new campus to the gym and field at our current campus. Since most athletes don’t have a license, students will have to find a way to get to sports games or practices.
“One of the things that we want to put in place is a practice carpool program,” said Fletcher when asked about sports transportation for next year. “It’s not very far to go but I would expect most kids to get on a bike and ride or walk.”
Yet one problem with biking or walking to sports practice after school is all of the gear that students would need to carry with them, even if the gym is about one mile away. In order to get students and gear over to the new campus, a plan for parents to be available after school to drive over a bunch of students and gear would be optimal for many teams.