SQUEEZING FOR SPACE

Squeezing

For Space

A look at the the growing issue of finding room to practice for the spring season.

by Hari Rao and Nate Bittner design by Nate Bittner

photo by Hari Rao

Right after the bell sounds at the end of the day, members of the boys track team flow into the locker room, ready for another day of practice. After putting on their practice attire, the mass of boys convene into the senior cafe to hold their daily team meeting. The coach announces the overview for the day, and the boys are excited to train for their upcoming meet. Groups break off, and each group heads to their respective practice area. Many of the boys arrive at the fieldhouse for their practice. But once they arrive, they find that the field house is filled with gymnasts flipping on big mats, cheerleaders practicing dance routines, and basketball players swarming the court, leaving only space of the few lanes around each sport to practice. At this time, while many spring sports teams are beginning to practice for their upcoming seasons, the high school can become packed. Especially since many sports are not able to practice outside because the weather does not permit so. This leads to teams needing to find space indoors to practice. While there are already facilities in Central available to be used as practice space, issues still arise and this leads to teams practicing in, as some say, unorthodox and potentially dangerous areas. The field house is known to be the hub for many activities such as track and field, softball, lacrosse, gymnastics, basketball, baseball, and more for a total of 13 sports during the spring (many of which can include multiple teams). The large complex houses four courts and an indoor 200 meter track surrounding the courts. With all these teams and a only limited number of practice spaces, these areas begin to crowd. “It’s tough to get a good work-out these days,” said Patrick Richards, girls track and field coach. “Everybody wants their own space and time and it’s especially difficult to get your team where it needs to be.” Because the field house provides a practice area for multiple sports teams, the coaches of the sports have to work together to reserve times to practice. Athletic Director Dan Jones, who has worked at Central since 2012, helps to ensure scheduling is a smooth process. “I meet with the coaches before each season, and we go through the schedules of their practices,” Jones said. “I go through and make sure we have space for everybody.” Often times students will have to race just to get to spaces on the track, especially with more than 140 students on the boys track and field team. “There is a competition for space in the fieldhouse, there’s only so much room and there’s only six lanes so everyones trying to use lanes one and two,” said Andrew Johnston, junior on boys track and field. “You have to fight for those lanes.” The time slots to use the spaces are divided up into either an hour and a half or two hour portions. Each sport tries to alternate the days they use specific facilities, which, in theory, would prevent the spaces from becoming overly-packed and affecting workout routines. However, sports may still have to share practice spaces. “Sometimes, for example, the girls [junior varsity] and freshman lacrosse teams may have to share the Tower,” Jones said. “I try to rotate sports so not everybody is always going at a time very early or late.” The field house is the only facility inside the school that provides practice space for sports like track and field and lacrosse, especially during the winter. “Coaches might have something going on [in the evening,] so the only time they could practice is right after school,” Jones said. “However, the field house could be filled because there might be a basketball game that takes precedent.” If a sport has a game a certain day, there are “unwritten rules” that coaches try to accomodate for other sports if they need the field house for those occasions. If track were to have a meet on Friday, then Jones would try to give the field house to them on Thursday for practice there beforehand. Since boys and girls track and field teams do have an indoor season, they typically need to do more practicing and less conditioning unlike many other sports at this time. Richards touched on how it is tough to find space around the school for his track and field athletes because they still have to train for the indoor season. “It’s not like we’re running two or three meets to prepare for the outdoor season, we are expected to put a welltrained team out there [for the indoor season],” Richards said. “It’s tough to do it when your space is limited to practice.” Since these athletes need more

space for running and throwing, this leaves them to use hallways around the school. Their activities range from silent stretching to hard sprinting down the World Languages and English hallways. “It’s weird having to run through the hallways while there are teachers leaving,” Johnston said. “You just have to run around them.” While students may not mind having to squeeze down hallways, there may be traffic in the halls both before and after school with faculty or clubs around the building, causing an inconvenience or potential hazard. Jones says it is a huge safety concern. “I coached track for many years, and we didn’t have a field house at my old high school, so we did practice in the Daniel Daly, coach for track and field. “I’ve seen shotputs go outside spectator areas.” Students competing at these meets have also taken notice of the lack of space. According to Daly, often times spectators in sectioned off areas can get in the way of the athletes and may even hold up their events. “It’s a mess,” Johnston said. “For high jump when we have a home meet, there’s nowhere for people who come to sit.” Johnston went on to emphasize how this can easily disrupt many events like his own. With no where for fans to go, meets can become jam packed. “They just walk around the inside of the track,” Johnston said. “When I’m trying to jump high there’s just people that walk across as I’m about to jump and sacrifices with taking time out of doing homework to come back to school in the evening for practice, he tries to eliminate morning practices as much as he can in the favor of his athletes’ health. “I’m a firm believer that kids need a proper amount of rest,” Richards said. “In training theory — if kids don’t recover, then they get hurt.” The softball team does not always get to practice at the Diamond Edge Academy. Sometimes they will find themselves having to share the space with the baseball team. Zust explained that on the days they don’t go to the academy, they are left practicing in the school, usually on the balcony of the main gym and sometimes in the field house. She sees sharing the main

“We have to be flexible and tell our girls they’re going to have to wake up at 4:45 in the morning because that’s just how it is.” - Brittney Zust

hallways,” Jones said. “I had kids running in hallways, then someone [in a room] opens up a door and the kid runs into the door.” Richards talked about how training in the hallways does not only pose a safety hazard, but it also could be harmful to the athletes themselves. He uses this as the reason for why girls track and field, unlike boys, do not typically practice in the hallways and instead turn to cross-training in the fitness center. “It’s tough on their legs,” Richards said. “When we start training our kids, especially on these hard floors, they have a tendency to get hurt.” Even as track practice areas have been jammed with traffic during the week, meets haven’t been an exception. On meet days, students have to deal with the normal traffic they might see on a regular practice day with the addition of spectators and judges walking around. Many areas also have to be sectioned off in order to make room for specific events. “During meets we have to be mindful to create boundaries for spectators,” said

16 | Features I’ll almost run into them, it’s a circus.” While concerns with practice spaces have been a pressing issue on many track athletes, sports like baseball and softball have had their own complications. All 22 of the schools softball players must hold their team practices at Diamond Edge Academy, a facility outside of Hinsdale Central. “We are continuing to grow our program, and one of our biggest struggles is when girls find out that we practice off-site for a chunk of the season,” said Brittany Zust, special education teacher and head softball coach. Often times Zust will have to move her girls throughout the school just to find a place to practice without needing to travel. “A lot of our times we practice are early in the morning, where most other sports go after school,” Zust said. “We have to be flexible and tell our girls they’re going to have to wake up at 4:45 in the morning because that’s just how it is.” Even though Richards said he realizes that his athletes would have to make gym’s balcony as a problem that can be frustrating to handle despite the effort that coaches and staff put into making it work. “Every team is trying to find every inch of space in this building at 3 o’clock,” Zust said. “You may have boys volleyball in the main gym, in the corner the soccer team could be running laps around the balcony, you can’t even maneuver around people without getting in someone’s way.” When asked if Zust had ever encountered issues in sharing the practice spaces, she responded that every coach tries to do the best for their own sport by working with other coaches. She described it as a challenge yet one that is manageable. “We all have our own goals and own agendas for our programs, so sometimes it’s difficult to divide the space up evenly,” Zust said. “I’d love to say ‘hey I want to practice after school,’ but sometimes you have to be mindful that this sport may be using that place.” When spring comes around later

during second semester, more teams are able to practice outdoors and thus space restrictions are removed. However, there are still a few areas that some sports teams still have to share. “[Softball and baseball] have our own fields outside, that’s not really a problem,” Zust said. “I think that’s when you see other teams fighting for space, with Dickinson and Tower [the practice field].” Richards highlighted that since the weather in the Midwest around early spring time produces unfavorable conditions, it could pose as an issue since many spring sports are starting their seasons soon. If it were to be raining or the conditions outside were unfavorable, Zust said that softball would have indoor practice. Zust accounts that if this were the case, many players on the team may become annoyed because practicing indoors is a major inconvenience to the team since the players prefer to be practicing on grass. “If we’re still [on the balcony] because it’s raining day-after-day in the middle of April, then it gets really old to be sitting in a tiny space where you can only do so much,” Zust said. It’s been almost a year since Central’s referendum was passed that ensured new changes coming to many of the existing facilities, along with new ones. For athletics, it was promised that upgrades and renovations would be added to many places where different athletic teams at Central practice and play. In the fall and spring seasons, different teams and activities like softball, football and soccer make time for each other to share the space available. Plans from the referendum include new artificial turf and even a new grandstand and pressbox. Along with these changes, the tennis courts are expected to also receive an upgrade that would involve redoing the entire court from scratch. Arguably the biggest changes are coming to the pool. After 62 years the facility will get a complete makeover, including a new location for diving which would allow the Central to host tournaments at its own school. However with all these changes to facilities, no changes are in store for the fieldhouse and gym. “There should be somewhere for people to sit [in the field house] so they’re not walking around while the meets are happening and getting in the way of the athletes,” Johnston said. However changes like this have been difficult to follow up on in the past.

The Boys track team splits up due to a lack of space for the whole team in the field house.

“We did have some extra space that was set to be created in the original referendum, but that was eliminated in the second one,” Jones said. “It’s still on the list of possible future needs.” Zust said she believes that putting money gained from the referendum towards creating new spaces would not only benefit sports teams’ practices but also the hundreds of clubs offered at Central. She mentioned that in previous years there was discussion whether another closed building should be added for hosting sports practices during the winter. “Not only would that help every program, but it’s also going to have a long term effect where someone in the community could rent out that facility or [teams] could use that space and not have to spend money going somewhere else,” Zust said. With years of experience Jones has recognized that Central has become a large school with many participating athletes. With so many areas constantly needing attention, it’s not always easy for everything to be taken care of. “This school is old, overcrowded, and landlocked,” Jones said. “I remember hearing that [Central] needed $250 million worth of upgrades.” Zust added that she would love to see overall expansion that would allow more sports teams to be able to practice without conflicting with other practices. “It would be nice to have our own spot guaranteed every day,” Zust said. “You want to practice at your own school; that’s how you show school spirit.” Despite all the difficulties with time and space, the goal still remains the same for coaches and athletes. Practice is important, but maintaining a safe environment is more important in the big picture. “We have to make [the practice areas] as safe as possible and also try to get a work-out in,” Jones said. The coaching staff said they face a difficult task in trying to find space at Central. Some ideas that a few spoke about involved using the facilities already at Central and the referendum to be able to open up more space. One example was adding a roof over the tennis courts and having it be a multi-purpose area. “We could convert the old pool to another space, like a wrestling room, and the [current] wrestling room could’ve been a poms/cheerleader room which would open up more space in the field house,” Jones said. “We have to think outside the box.”