Cleveland High School is finally getting a football field

Cleveland High School has been called Seattle’s forgotten football team as students waited years for a new sports field. Finally, on Tuesday, there was a big step forward.

The football team has faced challenges without a field as school district officials continued to promise that construction was coming — it’s been a long wait. The practice field is dangerous and unusable; Cleveland has been the only school in the district without a place to practice.

The football team had to use fields at other schools. Sometimes they used park space to practice. Players often took a bus or walked to these off-campus venues, hauling all their equipment. The team had to walk 25 minutes to practice at a city soccer field last October — with no yard lines or uprights.

“I don’t like it … I wish that we could be on a real football field that had lines on it so we could actually know what a yard is,” one player said.

“To be honest I just kind of, since I’ve been here I’ve heard like, ‘Oh the field is going to get done next year, the field is going to get done next year’ and you know it hasn’t happened yet,” said frustrated Coach Paul Arnold.

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At the time the district said there had been a capital levy approved in 2013 for a new field. They were waiting to come to agreement with Seattle Parks — which owns part of the field. And they were waiting for environmental reviews, etc. Basically, a lot of bureaucracy slowing things down.

Cleveland High School football field

That all changed on Tuesday. A celebration was held at the Cleveland field as a handful of players, coaches and district officials gathered for a ceremonial groundbreaking. The new field is under construction.

“Excited to get it done,” said Associate Superintendent of Facilities and Operations at Seattle Public Schools Flip Herndon. “We want a quality project by the time it’s all done so that’s what we’re hoping to do … trying to get it done as quickly as possible.”

As far as a timeline for getting the field done — there isn’t one.

“Not yet, we’re still working with the city,” Herndon said. “We’re trying to accelerate it as much as possible. Total, with lights and everything will be at the end of next summer, but we’re hoping the field is ready by sometime this fall. But we don’t have an exact timeline yet.”

He’s hopeful it will be done in time for the football team to get a couple of practices in late this season, but the team won’t be able to fully use the field until at least next school year.

When it is finished, it will include a new artificial turf field, that can be used for football, soccer, and other sports. It will also have a new track with a rubberized surface, along with other upgrades.

Defensive Tackle Aram Gould is a little sad that his class won’t get to practice on the new field, but he’s excited for the next round of students who will benefit from it and won’t have to go through what his class did.

“Just moving around to a lot of different fields, not having one place that we can go,” he said. “We had to carry our gear all the way down and figure out buses and cars. Yeah, it was a lot of work. A lot of work just to practice.”

“Yeah, you don’t really have a consistent field so you’re not really focused on the game as much, you’re focused on where you’re going to practice and everybody’s kind of like disoriented and they’re getting there at different times. And yeah, it’s not very teamly,”he said.

Head coach Ron Jackson couldn’t agree more with his student.

“There’s time when we couldn’t find a place to practice,” Coach Jackson said. “We have to bus here, or carpool. That is a big distraction. It’s not a motivator. Because you don’t know if they are going to show up or not, and that takes a lot out of your practice time. This right here … it shows them that there is hope, and we’re going to make this happen — it’s going to happen.”

“It’s long overdue, but I’m very thrilled for the players, also for the community,” he said. “We need a field to build a community and bring awareness to Cleveland High School; hopefully get more students to participate. Having a new field means a whole lot, so I’m very thrilled and I’m excited. I’m kind of speechless standing here looking around, because I can’t believe how much work they put into this. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

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