It was a difficult season for the Live Oak High freshman
football team. Not only did the team face the prospect of not
playing at all this season, which thinned out its roster, but it
was without a home field for most of the season when the new
Richert Field sod gave out and had to be replaced.
It was a difficult season for the Live Oak High freshman football team. Not only did the team face the prospect of not playing at all this season, which thinned out its roster, but it was without a home field for most of the season when the new Richert Field sod gave out and had to be replaced.
This was the team that the district did not want; a team that was forced to leave school early, board a bus and travel to nearly all its games. But the Acorn freshmen overcame the hardships, played hard and proved themseleves, earning a 4-4-1 record despite all the challenges.
“I commend the kids, the coaches and the parents for making the best out of a bad situation,” Live Oak varsity head football coach Glen Webb said. “They had a joyful experience in spite of it all.”
“I would say that they were very successful,” Acorn freshman football coach Jeff Thomas said. “They played their guts out. They played hard no matter what the score was.”
The drama began before the season started when the Morgan Hill Unified School District initially said that there would not be a freshman football team. But thanks to a funding guarantee by Live Oak boosters, and pressure put on MHUSD board members by parents and other football program backers, the team was allowed to continue.
However, since the word had gotten out that there may not be a team, few players came to the training camps. And things hadn’t improved much by the time the first games were played.
“It was very unfortun-ate,” Live Oak athletic director Mark Cummins said. “I can understand how they (would) feel slighted.”
According to Thomas, the lack of kids on the roster forced the playbook to be re-worked to accommodate fewer players.
“We had a lot of kids going both ways,” he said.
After the situation with the district was worked out, more problems emerged.
After just one week of use, the Live Oak football field was deemed unsafe for play.
When the football field was redone, sod was hurriedly put in place instead of seed so it would be ready for graduation. But it was three months after the graduation before the field was ready for any kind of activity.
Both the new track and the new field were quickly signed off to the school without having the people who would be using them the most, namely the athletic director and sports coaches, inspect them.
According to former Live Oak principal Rich Knapp, who had a big part in getting the field in place, the district followed the recommendations of Beile Sports out of San Jose when installing the field.
“We hired what we thought were the best people out there and took their advice,” Knapp said in September. “They made a recommendation for what they thought was approp-riate for our climate and for the soil type. They selected the turf based on a chemical analysis. They told us the more time we could stay off (the field) the better.”
The result was that the football field got torn up during the first week of play on Sept. 19 and the varsity, JV and freshman football teams all had to play their next “home” games, three weeks later against Alisal, in Gilroy.
The following week, for the San Benito game — which was also Homecoming week, the field was cleared for football use, with a couple of exceptions. On notable exception was that the freshman team could not play on the field.
As a result, the team was forced to play the remainder of their games on the road.
“We were going to be road warriors,” Thomas said. “We took it as a challenge.”
To add to the troubles, the team had to accomodate the schedules of the other teams that they were playing because of the scheduling change.
“Our schedule was erratic,” Thomas said. “We would play on Thursday at 6 p.m. or Friday at 3 p.m. or Saturday at 9 a.m.”
Traveling for each game meant that the players could never play in front of a home crowd. Families would come out to the games but, according to Thomas, the team was only able to have a friendly crowd once.
“After a while you get tired playing in front of the other team’s fans,” he said.
According to Cummins, the team showed great stamina by playing like it did. He is optimistic that there will be some well-seasoned athletes coming up to the JV and varsity squads in the near future.
“It shows there is a tremendous group of athletes coming,” Cummins said. “They can give the 49ers a few lessons on how to win on the road.”
With the season over, a dark cloud of uncertainty about the future of the field and the future of freshman football still looms over the heads of those who are involved with the football program.
Thomas said it is hard to predict what will happen to freshman football in the future, but it will depend on whether the school district administration addresses the issue in a timely matter.
“It is tough to say how things will turn out,” Thomas said. “Until I see that (the district’s) track record says otherwise, it will be up in the air until the last minute. Unless someone stands up and can prove to me that they will do something, I don’t see anything changing.”
Webb agreed that freshman football team endured plenty this season. “Certainly they felt like they were getting more than their share of the grief,” he said.
And, Webb said problems with the field will continue despite its ability to weather the abuse well over the duration of the recently completed season.
“Five years from now, there will be a dirt patch,” he said.
