Athletic field, track fully completed
SEASIDE >> As a student at Seaside High School in the mid-1970s, head football coach Al Avila remembers a poorly maintained football field with no stadium around it, used only for practice.
“We didn’t even want to practice on it,” said Avila, the longesttenured coach on campus.
While stands were built by the time Avila returned as an assistant football coach in 1984, the field has always been an eyesore, littered with divots, poor footing and what was a mixture of sand, dirt and grass.
“Our stadium has been the armpit of the county,” said Avila, who has been a part of the Spartans football coaching staff for 34 years. Not anymore.
A glistening all-weather red track surrounds Seaside’s new state- of-the- art synthetic football/soccer field, giving them one of the nicest facilities to take in an event in the region.
“I never thought I’d see what I’m seeing today,” Avila said. “I’m still pinching myself. Even when I saw the blueprints, I didn’t hold my breath. Our superintendent made the difference. He had a vision.”
For the past six months, Avila has camped out in the afternoons on a hill above the field, sitting in a lawn chair watching and witnessing the progress of Seaside’s field.
“I would get there and sit, sometimes for four hours,” Avila said. “I could not believe what I was seeing. I went down one day and bought the guys pizza.”
The synthetic grass, which is two different shades of green every five yards, sparkles in the sunlight, with end zones painted in red. In black letters, one end zone says “Seaside,” with the other reading “Spartans.”
Along each sideline is a red and black 5-foot wide stripe from the 25-yard line to its counterpart on the other end, which is the coaches and players box. In the center of the field is a giant “S” with the Spartan logo sandwiched inside it.
“I look at it every day and I’m still in awe,” said Avila, who has guided Seaside to a pair of Central Coast Section divisional titles. “All the little detail stuff. All the special touches.”
The days of recycled black rubber tires in between the turf for cushion has been replaced by cork, which is deemed safer from a health standpoint.
“Founded or unfounded, the rubber tires had become a health concern,” said Jeff Dickey, the regional manager of Beynon Sports, which put the surface and track in. “This field is a special coded cork.”
Dickey, who oversees this region, has seen his company put in new turf at Monterey Peninsula College, Carmel, Monterey, North County and most recently Pajaro Valley high schools.
They have also laid down most of the new tracks in the county, using material that doesn’t change based on the weather and lasts longer in terms of durability.
“I have been on the track side of the business for 30 years,” Dickey said. “The turf varies, depending on what the district wants. But these districts around here have their acts together.”
New light standards that climb 100-plus feet rise up from both sides of the field, while a new scoreboard was added, along with a Spartan mural that will greet spectators at the gate.
The Spartans’ eight-lane track is built for speed. Once upon a time, Seaside was known for its blistering sprinters. Avila’s son, Michael, was a CCS 200-meter champion in 2007.
Each exchange zone for all three turns of the 400-meter relay are painted in gray, with the name Seaside Spartans painted in gray and black on both straightaways of Lane 4.
“The two-tone color in the zones is something we started,” said Dickey, whose company has designed 10 of the 12 Pac-12 tracks, including Hayward Field at the University of Oregon, the site of this year’s U.S. Olympic Trials. “It’s an Olympic-style relay zone.”
The shot put and discus rings are on the south side of the facility, with runways for the long jump, triple jump and pole vault toward the ocean side of the stadium.
“You can sit in the stands and see every event,” Avila said. “And you have an ocean view. I can’t tell you how many former players have called. The alumni and community deserved this, as well as these kids.”
The only schools with facilities in the county that don’t have all-weather tracks are Gonzales and York, while King City, Gonzales, Greenfield and Soledad are the only schools without artificial turf football fields.
Most of the stories Avila and former players recalled were the sprained ankles from landing in a gopher hole, or standing in 3 inches of mud on the sidelines when it rained.
“No more bucket crews,” Avila laughed. “We had crews, whose job was to fill holes each week. Some of them were massive.”
Avila recalled a practice when the team was doing conditioning drills, and he lost sight of a player who disappeared in the distance.
“When we went down to find him, he hit a sinkhole that dropped him 4 feet,” Avila said. “I’m not joking. It could have been a lot worse.”
From the first day when contractors tore out the grass, to witnessing the trenches built, pipes laid down, the surface put on, Avila has documented each step of the process with pictures.
“No one wanted to come and play here,” Avila said. “I used to tell the kids we have to love our field, no matter how bad it is. But we’ve dealt with our share of injuries because of this field.”
T he field has also been equipped for soccer, where the Spartans won a Santa Lucia Division boys title last year and watched freshman Jacky Vasquez produce 38 goals for the girls soccer program.
“Seeing those kids play on a torn-up field brought tears to my eyes,” said Avila, who is also a physical education teacher at Seaside. “I felt so bad for them. The facility was so ghetto.”
When Avila walks around the facility today, he thinks back to a time when he said he would never come back after graduating, as he was living in the East Bay, having just been cut by the then-San Diego Chargers.
“I remember telling myself I’m done with this place,” Avila said. “I’d wave to it along the freeway. But I came back to help coach my brother and keep him out of trouble. I never left. I’m a Spartan.”