Support for spring teams means helping them get the practice they require. Photo by Oscar Gutierrez.

By Alex Arce

Spring is finally here and PHS’s athletes are ready for their competitions. The practices are over and the chance to show their talent has arrived. These Indians are ready.

There is a lot of pressure for PHS athletes to make our school proud, and every student athlete is doing their very best to succeed. They are even working around some conditions that are difficult to remedy. Sadly, there has been clashing of schedules because the track team and baseball teams share the same stadium.

Practice scheduling and game scheduling has been a little bit harder. Practices have to be cut short and some were even cancelled, because of miscommunication. It is unfortunate that eager students go to the stadium ready to work and were unable to practice. It is disappointing to athletes, when they show up to practice ready to go and they are told they cannot train today.

Both teams cannot practice as hard as they might otherwise, if they need to cut some practices short and cancel others. While space at PHS is a premium, each team needs to have its own space so they can be at their best. The athletic directors in our school have tried to fix this situation by analyzing what other school districts, with similar space constraints do to fix this problem.

What the directors have found is that other schools have staggered practice schedules. For example, one week the track team will practice from 3-5, and the baseball team will practice from 5-7. The next week it would switch and track is 5-7, while baseball is 3-5.

This may seem like a simple and easy fix. Even though this is a good idea, there is still a great deal of room for miscommunication. For example, even though the stadium is supposed to belong to the track team from 3-5, practices cannot be held because of a baseball game scheduled at the same time. This causes tensions between the teams and it is really frustrating.

Both teams want to ensure that they are capable of performing on the field, but that means that they need the proper training. There are solutions to this problem. One might be another space for one of these teams to practice or to make sure the schedule is organized accurately. Both teams and the athletic directors must come up with a plan to ensure that things run smoothly.