It’s early in the AM, and you’re already late for school. You grab your school bag and sports bag and lug it to the school. You try the athletic doors because that’s the common place to store sports equipment… it’s locked. As you walk in the main entrance, and then backtrack through school to the athletic office, a song plays on repeat in your mind. “I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more.” A commonly heard song has become a reality for many athletes as they arrive at school, having to figure out the best possible storage space for their sports necessities.
Due to the athletic entrance doors being locked in the mornings, athletes with bulky equipment are forced to find a different place to put them or suffer the long walk through the whole school. When the athletic entrance is open for students, athletes who have practice after school normally could put their equipment in the athletic office so they don’t need to carry it around and it is a convenient place to grab it before practice. Though now with the doors being locked, this isn’t the case.
Athletes with large equipment are heavily impacted by these locked doors, one group specifically is the lacrosse team. The lacrosse team’s multitude of bulky equipment creates a large inconvenience in the morning for the players. Sophomore varsity lacrosse player Taylor McCullough is a two year player and still struggles with a convenient place to put her bags in the morning.
“It really inconveniences the athletes because we have to put our stuff down [somewhere else],” McCullough said. “The lacrosse sticks don’t fit in our lockers, so we have to find a place to put them.”
With the lack of space in lockers, most athletes use the athletic office for storage, but with the doors being locked they are forced to find a different spot. This is a common struggle amongst many of the student athletes as they feel uncomfortable walking through the halls with their heavy bags. Athletes are exhausted and looking for a change.
Another team with bags too big to fit in their lockers is baseball. Sophomore and varsity baseball player Jalen Gant brings all of his equipment to school. It’s an everyday hassle. He urges the school staff to make a change.
“I have to walk around the whole school, it’s pretty heavy, like it’s just a lot. Please open the doors, it’s way easier and the students would love it,” Gant said.
While unlocking the athletic doors would make mornings easier and omit an annoying inconvenience for students, there are other factors that go into it.
School Resource Officer Deputy Mike Allen is head of the high school security. He believes making the athletic entrance a third access point is not safe or probable for the future.
“You gotta look at safety over convenience,” Allen said. “The way the school [is] set up, we have the parent drop off [front of school] and student drop off [rear of school]. We basically want to limit the access points that people have because the more access points, the better chances that somebody, a bad character, can get in.”
There has to be at least two staff members at each unlocked door in order for safety measures to be complete. One to guard and one on backup just in case they may have to leave.
“If you look at it, if we spread out the people we have- Mr. Brooks, Mr. Felix, [Josh] Bellhorn, [David] Chana- they could have other things going on,” Allen said. “If something happens and they have to leave that door, those doors are set on a timer, about 6:50-7:30, so if something were to happen and we had to pull those people away, we have no way to lock or secure the doors.”
There is still a chance the school could make the change, however it would surely come at a financial cost. The only reasonable solution to have the athletic office as a third school entrance would be to hire additional staff members to monitor doors. This not only adds to the financial needs of our community, but also increases the chances of a security breach in our school.
Although athletes are desperate for a change, giving students what they want is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Solutions are available, but they come at a cost. If athletes really want to make a change, they have to be part of the solution of finding the finances and accept the security consequences.
