The Flint Garage’s temporary closure affects all students and faculty on De Anza. But with parking being rerouted to the soccer and baseball fields, it doesn’t affect anyone more than the coaches and athletes on De Anza.
The soccer and baseball fields will be used for parking until the Flint center is done or until another solution is found. Preparation to use the fields as parking started in July, and De Anza students and faculty have been parking on the field since the start of the Fall quarter.
The soccer teams, football team, and cross country have all felt the effects of not having a soccer field.
“It is a struggle in that, for instance, the women’s soccer team has to move their normal practice time up by two and a half hours, “said Coleen Lee-Wheat, Dean of the De Anza Physical Education and Athletics. “So then they have to come to school even earlier.”
Home games will be played on the football field for both football and soccer. However, there will be a drop in night games as the lights provided for the games are not bright enough.
“Can’t play a soccer game in the dark,” said Lee-Wheat.
Parking on the field comes at a very opportune time. “The soccer field needed to be replaced. It’s 12 years old. It should have been replaced probably two years ago. The college came up with this idea to fold two projects into one,” said Lee-Wheat.
“There were a lot of people involved, it was a campus decision,” she said. “Senior staff strongly supported the idea because it was the only way we could get a new soccer field,”
Once the Flint Garage is reopened, it will take approximately three months to put in the new soccer field, and four or more months to level the baseball field.
“We appreciate the support from the administration as well as the the great effort all the coaches and the athletes putting forth in order to make sure that all the students and faculty on campus have parking,” said Lee-Wheat.