Trona might become the new normal.
Trona High, located in the high desert of San Bernardino County, has an on-campus dirt football field. Grass cannot grow there and the school has no artificial turf. The dirt is watered, leveled and lined on game day.
If this drought persists, perhaps there will be Tronas all over Orange County high school sports.
Watering reductions are beginning to come at county athletic fields, with implementation differing from school to school, from district to district.
Canyon athletic director Patrick Bendzick said Thursday that Canyon already had reduced watering and expected further restrictions in the near future.
Cypress baseball coach John Weber said his team’s field, one of the finer ones in county baseball, is down to three days of watering a week. “It’s starting to look a little brown,” Weber said earlier this week, although the Bermuda turf still looked fine to these eyes. Baseball coaches sometimes freak out at the tiniest weed.
At the Trabuco Hills baseball field, Mustangs coach Michael Burns takes care of the infield but outfield care is in the prevue of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District.
Some schools, like Mission Viejo, have used reclaimed water for years.
A growing number of football stadiums have artificial turf. A few schools, including some larger private schools like Mater Dei, Santa Margarita and Servite, have at least some artificial turf on their campus fields. All of Mater Dei’s athletic fields are artificial turf fields.
The ongoing drought will have significant impact on high school sports. That impact will start to be felt next school year as school districts begin to form plans and order their schools to follow those plans.
Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
• The CIF-Southern Section is getting closer to presenting to its member schools what the football playoffs would look like if divisions were created solely by creative equity. That is, a league’s playoff teams would no longer always be placed in the same playoff division. The playoffs selection committee could decide that the league’s champion should be placed in a high division while the league’s second-place team could be sent to a mid-level playoff division.
• Glenn Martinez, in charge of the Southern Section’s management of football, said Wednesday at the CIF-SS Council meeting there could be an Open Division in football playoffs some day.
• A group of athletic directors have met for several months as a public school/private school committee. Former La Quinta basketball coach and athletic director Jim Perry, who has held many positions in various bodies of CIF State and the Southern Section, is involved. He said, “The goal is to get over this long-standing discussion of ‘split them up (into separate playoff divisions)’ which we know can’t happen, because the courts won’t let that happen for one thing, and it would never work.”
• So far this school year, the CIF-SS has sold 26,500 more tickets than last year for its championship events and the TV rights fees for CIF-SS events is 111 percent higher than last year. CIF-SS treasurer Jeff Jordan said during Wednesday’s CIF-SS Council meeting that the income would enable the section to distribute $1 million of it to member schools.
• Gabe Warner of Woodbridge, Austin Tamagno of Brea Olinda and Nick Coghill of Valencia deservedly won the individual awards at Saturday’s Orange County Track and Field Championships. Connor Meech of San Juan Hills had a great day, too, winning the 110 and 300 hurdles. The 35.72 Meech ran in the 300 hurdles is the best time in the Southern Section this season.
• La Habra junior linebacker Jake Colacion, 6-1, 215, has an offer from Arizona. He has made unofficial visits to Northwestern and Notre Dame, so you can bet his grades are strong.
• Laguna Beach’s baseball team has won 44 consecutive Orange Coast League games. The Breakers are 10-0 in league going into today’s league game at Estancia. The county record for consecutive league wins is 45 by La Quinta, which won that many league games in a row twice (2001-05 and 2005-08).
• Baseball and softball base coaches must wear helmets as of this season. There is a rebellion against that rule among women softball coaches, a rebellion that could lead to a CIF State proposal that would exclude softball from the rules.
• St. John Bosco received 162 applications for its basketball coaching position, according to Bosco athletic director Monty McDermott. He said the school wants to announce its selection “ASAP.”
• San Juan Hills quarterback Patrick O’Brien, a 6-foot-4, 215-pound junior, recently received a scholarship offer from Nebraska. Arizona State coaches will be in the county Monday to evaluate him.
• Tributes to Ted Crego, former Century football coach who died this week at age 59 from lingering complications of a stroke suffered several years ago, are filling the inbox. Crego coached from a wheelchair after the stroke.
• Crego also coached basketball at Century, where he was boys sophomore and junior varsity head coach. Godinez coach Greg Coombs, who coached for years at Century, said of Crego: “He was such a wonderful influence on kids in such a positive fashion. All of the things as a coach you try to teach kids, like being responsible and overcoming adversity, was what Ted Crego was all about.”
Contact the writer: sfryer@ocregister.com
