Westminster sports are a vital component of campus life at the school. Students participating in sports can sharpen their skills while playing with a different team and coach than usual, can represent Westminster athletics during games against other schools, and can form lasting community with their teammates as they practice, work hard, and have fun together. Unfortunately, however, recent difficulties with teams finding enough time and space to get together are causing Middle School players to enjoy their sports less and less.
Although Westminster has expansive sports facilities for their athletes to use, two main factors have led to a decrease in overall time students get to spend with their teams: a lack of practice space, and varying season lengths.
Construction over the past few years has limited practice space at Westminster. Since Broyles field has been under construction and rendered unusable for nearly a year, many sports that need large fields, like soccer and lacrosse, have had to deal with the repercussions of this facility closing. Because Broyles is no longer an option, sports coaches have limited space for practice, since Kent Field, the summer camp, and the football stadium can’t accommodate more than two to three teams. If, for instance, all of Kent Field has been booked for Upper School soccer and lacrosse games, and the football stadium is being used for Middle School boys and girls soccer practice, the Middle School lacrosse teams would have no choice but to cancel practice.
Assistant Director of MS Athletics Matt Tuneski agrees. “Getting [Broyles] up to speed would alleviate a lot of short-term problems just to get kids more practice space.”
Though Tuneski does not know exactly when Broyles will be fully available for sports again, he hopes it will open a little later in the year. “Hopefully sometime this spring.”
Tuneski also says the Athletic Department tries to allow most Middle School sports to practice regularly. “We hope for most of the sports between eight to ten week [seasons] . . . with meeting around four times a week.”
Space is not the only limiting factor for Middle School teams. Even when some groups have space to practice, they are still forced to cancel because of the short amounts of time they might be allotted to practice there. For example, there were times last year that Middle School Squash had courts to practice, but their booked time was still cut short or canceled when Upper School squash players arrived to the courts early for their own practice. Combined with the fact that they had a very short season overall, Middle School Squash didn’t get to spend much time together as a team.
8th Grader Max Collie says that though being on the team was fun, they didn’t have very much time together. “The season was short compared to other sports.” Some Middle School sports like football and wrestling can span up to three or four months, with practices nearly every day, and some even in the summer. 8th grade squash player Mabel Wang agrees. “I feel like squash is kind of overlooked, and the team gets less funding than many of the other, more popular sports . . . We barely had any practices.”
Many players in the Middle School really enjoy the time they get playing with their teams and would like to have longer seasons and more time to spend with their friends and coaches. Over the next few years, Westminster hopes to make that possible. “That’s the goal.” Tuneski says. “There’s a five-year strategic plan that we’ve been working on . . . the goal is to expand some of our fields and our facilities.”