ADS SCRAMBLING TO BLEND SEASONS TOGETHER

Choose a word — nightmare, stressful, draining — and they all apply.

With 17 Season 2 sports now in full swing and six Season 1 sports winding down in this coronavirus-crazy high school year, athletic directors are losing their minds, as well as sleep, trying to schedule games, practices, buses and officials — umpires and referees.

“Oh, yeah, it has been a lot of fun,” Helix Athletic Director Damon Chase said with his tongue planted fully in his cheek.

“It’s a near impossible task to expect us to find field space and gym time for all the sports — boys and girls. You have to be fair, and you don’t want teams practicing at 6 a.m. or leaving campus at 10 p.m.

“I check and double check schedules to make sure everyone has time, everyone has transportation, every game has officials. Right now, we have nine teams in the gym and 10 in the stadium. And it was 11 in the stadium before field hockey ended.”

Outdoor sports include baseball, softball, boys and girls water polo, boys and girls soccer, boys and girls lacrosse, boys and girls track as well as football, which finishes an abbreviated season Friday. When those sports field teams at all three levels — varsity, JV and freshmen — things get crowded.

In the gym, you have boys and girls volleyball, boys and girls basketball, badminton at some schools, boys and girls wrestling as well as cheer.

“Dance and cheer are huge at our school,” said Carlsbad Athletic Director Sam Eshelman, who is in his first year on the job. “Our dance team competes at a national level, so we have to find time for them. And we have AP testing in the gym, too.

“This week, the dance team is recording a routine for a national competition so coaches in the other sports have been very accommodating.”

Eshelman, like most ADs, said their coaches have been flexible.

Carlsbad, Eshelman said, is fortunate in that the school has a joint-use agreement with the city of Carlsbad to use parks. So lowerlevel teams practice at parks and the freshman football team is at Valley Middle School.

“And we’re lucky in that we have two gyms,” Eshelman said. “So we don’t have any 6 a.m. practices. Plus, our school day ends at 2, so we can start practices at 2:15 and get everyone out by 9.”

That’s not the case at Helix, where Chase said boys soccer practices from 6-7:30 a.m.

Basketball practices from 5:30-7:30 a.m.

The gym is in use from 5 a.m.-9 p.m.

“You have to put normal aside to make it all work,” Chase said. “If we had coaches with egos, coaches that didn’t get along, weren’t willing to compromise, this wouldn’t work. And it’s like that all over the county.”

At Mira Mesa, Athletic Director Ron Lardizabal said having a second field takes care of a lot of outdoor conflicts.

Gym time, however, is a different animal.

“We’ve been able to work out two-hour time slots, beginning at 1 p.m.,” Lardizabal said. “We delayed the start of boys volleyball until football season is over, so that has relieved some stress.

“But that ends next week.”

Mira Mesa, which is part of the San Diego City Schools, also has badminton, a sport not played in most parts of the county.

Track, which has more than 100 athletes, has had to make adjustments.

“Track coaches like to participate in invitationals,” Lardizabal said. “But there aren’t any invitationals this season. It’s all dual meets, but I made out two schedules just in case we’re allowed to have tri or quad meets.”

At Hilltop High, Athletic Director Nancy Acerrio has split the school’s only turf field into threes.

Teams practice sideline-to-sideline instead of goal line-to-goal line so that three teams can practice at the same time instead of just two.

“For sure, it has been a challenge,” Acerrio said. “It’s not ideal, but no solution is going to be ideal. “I don’t want athletes here at 5 a.m. or at 10 p.m. “And I don’t want my trainer here for 1215 hours.”

With limited field space at Hilltop, football coach Bryan Wagner jumped at the chance to take the last time slot — 7-9 p.m. most days.

“There are days we need to wait for a soccer game to end, but that’s OK,” Wagner said. “I’d rather wait for their game to finish than for their game to wait for our practice to end.”