Field Renovation Shifts Practice Location

Joshua Ellis, Reporter

After the 2022 football season, the James Campbell Football field was closed off for construction and has restricted Campbell’s 2023 Track and Field team from practicing on the field. Track practice has been held in D Building on the Campbell campus and on Tuesdays and Thursdays track practice is held at Waipahu High School considering they have a track available for use. Construction will be held throughout the duration of the track season and won’t be finished until right before football season.

The 2023 Track season started on January 31 and started their trips to Waipahu for practice that following week. Considering they have two practices a week at Waipahu, the school doesn’t provide a bus for every athlete to go there, leaving people to find their own way to practice. “I would expect the school to have a bus for us. I mean we aren’t the ones who choose practice to be at Waipahu,” said Miles Hornage, varsity high jump/sprinting track athlete. People are left having to wait for their parents to get home first to go practice, some even take a bus for practice afterschool , or the other few have their own cars to drive there themselves. Practice is set at 4:30pm when it’s at Waipahu, Wyatt Tau, track coach, said this gives enough time for everyone to get there. 

“Practices in Campbell in my opinion are a lot more relaxed, we just do stair runs and then a few sprints. Waipahu workouts are much more challenging and have us doing numerous reps of running,” said Jayden Matas, junior varsity sprinter. With having access to the track at Waipahu, it not only gives the athletes more things to work with but even the coaches. “We do block practices and the ground (in Campbell) is uneven so it’s not really good to work on,” said Matas. Campbell practices on concrete or either on their small grass field in front of the S building.

This 2023 track season is using other resources to still put in work through this shift of situations. Like some other schools, Campbells is not the only one going to Waipahu for track practice because of the unavailability of using their own track.