GILROY
– The Gavilan College women’s soccer team entered its fifth week
of the season Monday without a proper field on which to train.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – The Gavilan College women’s soccer team entered its fifth week of the season Monday without a proper field on which to train.
The soccer field at the college – uneven, littered with gopher holes and covered with grass that grows too long – was declared unfit for competitive play by Athletic Director Ron Hannon before the start of the season Aug. 15.
“There are holes, ruts, the risk for injury is very great,” President Steve Kinsella said of the soccer fields. “They’re not in a condition that would allow competitive play.”
The City of Gilroy, responsible for maintaining the field – including mowing, watering and rodent control – has failed to relieve unsafe playing conditions for at least six months, Hannon said.
“It’s a liability waiting to happen,” he said. “The things we needed to have happen to have the field ready this year didn’t happen.”
The City of Gilroy maintains the field and adjacent softball fields as part of a joint-use agreement it made with Gavilan College when the facilities were built in 1984. The city has sustained the fields for recreational league use, with standards less rigorous than those required for community college competition.
“Our commitment is to maintain the fields to a recreational level, and we would be continuing to do that,” said Carla Ruigh, the city’s operation services manager. “At this point, the city doesn’t have the resources to increase those standards for intercollegiate play.”
The city mows the fields twice a week, provides irrigation, weed control, fertilizing and litter pick-up, performs rodent control, fills in holes and re-seeds as needed, Ruigh said.
“We have been baiting and doing rodent control, but the infestation is beyond what our internal staff can handle,” Ruigh said.
Since Gavilan stopped using its football field two years ago, the gophers have been allowed to multiply and infest the soccer and softball fields, Ruigh said.
Hannon cited construction projects in the area surrounding the college as the main reason for the additional gophers.
He acknowledged that the city has worked on the field, but said it remains unsafe for players while the gopher problem is out of control.
“For recreational purposes, the facilities are great,” he said. “I know (the city has) spent time and money on their watering system … it looks nice, it looks plush, but until you walk out there …”
Gavilan is struggling to find a way to bring the field up to code and has been in talks with the city since early spring to get the field in playing condition – namely, to exterminate gophers infesting the field and repair the potholes caused by their tunneling system.
“We will probably share some of the cost with the city,” Kinsella said. “We understand the city has its budget concerns as well.”
Because the gopher infestation is too widespread for the city to handle, it will contract out for extermination and abatement, Ruigh said. The initial cost will be about $400 and keeping the gophers away will cost an additional $150 each month for at least one year. The work should begin within two weeks, Ruigh said.
Ruigh could not estimate how long it will be before players can return to the Gavilan field following extermination and surface repairs performed by the city.
When the season started with no plan for repairs in sight, Gavilan solicited bids from three landscaping companies to complete all the work necessary to rebuild the field, including filling the holes and re-seeding the grass, in seven to 10 days. Those bids were turned over to the city last week, but the city has not determined what it will do with them. The work would have cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 depending on how big the project turned out to be, Hannon said.
In the meantime, the Lady Rams are suffering.
“It’s very devastating,” Head Coach Marty Behler said. “The city of Gilroy is not keeping their end of the bargain to keep this field up for these students.”
The team has struggled to hold daily two-hour practices because facilities have been difficult to secure. Gavilan has contacted all high schools in the area, as well as the Morgan Hill soccer complex, but with football and field hockey seasons under way, adequate field space is hard to come by. Behler’s team was unable to use the soccer complex because their practices and weekly games would interfere with maintenance of those fields, she was told.
Bonfante Gardens opened up an area to the team, but the players without cars were unable to attend every practice, Behler said. The team has also stopped playing at Bonfante because the field was smaller than the regulation 110-by-70 yards and had no goal posts or lines.
“We need a goal, we need lines on the field,” Behler said. “The girls need to learn where to take shots from and at what angle.”
The Lady Rams are currently practicing on a 50-by-50 yard area on the Gavilan campus. The team is looking to adopt the soccer field at Anzar High School in San Juan Bautista as its home field. Anzar has offered its field for Gavilan’s two games this week and will look into hosting future games.
The team has been forced to play its games at its opponents’ schools. Last Thursday, players traveled a total of four hours to play a team in Fresno, although the game was scheduled to be held in Gilroy.
“It makes it extremely difficult,” Behler said. “These girls are working very, very hard, and they’re very dedicated. But all of them work, they all have jobs and things and their employers are having a fit.”
Several players on the team enrolled in math and science classes have already used two of three excusable absences, Behler said.
“It affects our student athletes, the fact that they’re now having to get out of class when they shouldn’t have to and they have to make up the work,” Hannon said. “It puts a strain on them and a strain on the faculty to catch students up.”
Field conditions at Gavilan have steadily deteriorated, said Behler, who joined the team last year. Last season, several visiting teams nearly refused to play on the field because of the uneven surface, she said. If the teams had refused to play, Gavilan would have been forced to forfeit.
“That’s a slap in the face to the team and to the program and to the college,” said Hannon, who is confident the city will step forward and fix the gopher problem. He also hopes that, once the initial problem is solved, the city will improve field maintenance. “In rebuilding this program, we’re setting the standard, and if we’re going to put together a competitive program that is everything we need it to be, (proper field maintenance) is what we expect.”
As the college works to rebuild its women’s soccer program it is pushing to raise the city’s maintenance standard so that the lawn will be trimmed to a shorter, competition-appropriate length and gopher holes will be immediately filled. Under the joint-use agreement, however, the college will be responsible for upkeep that goes above and beyond the city’s standards, Ruigh said.
