As spring sport athletes begin to practice and use the fields, the damage from previous years and the long winter starts to surface. The turf and baseball field have little to no damage, while the track could use the most maintenance.

“The general care of the athletic fields really depend on the weather.  If the weather isn’t very good we try to stay off the fields because we don’t want to do any damage to them a lot of times you need to be patient and wait for mother nature to melt the snow or dry out fields,” Activities Director Chad Holtz said.

The turf was recently re-done last school year, but the track itself has significant damage that has been brought up to school officials. It is scheduled to be resurfaced in the future.

“Our track has some serious issues at this point. We have a huge gouge across three lanes and a lane that the track is lifting at the start line. This has been pointed out, but not sure what they will do since it is scheduled to be resurfaced after the season,” head track and field coach Kendra Holmes said.

According to head soccer coach Sara Fjell, there is not much to do for upgrades concerning the turf as it is in good condition. As far as maintenance goes with the new turf, the snow cannot be touched. The track and soccer players that require the use of the turf had to wait until the snow and ice have melted.

“It is very frustrating considering the fact that we had games we need to practice for soccer,” senior Lauren Roberts said. “We need to see how the girls for are starting line up would look like. So we had to practice indoors in tight gym where you can’t play a realistic game.”

The city of Bellevue maintains the baseball field since it is used by the College World Series (CWS) for practices and games, according to senior Tyler Haney.

“The field is easily the best in Class A,” Haney said. “More and more schools are going to the full turf fields, or the turf infield/grass outfield, but we won’t here at East, which is what I like. Our field has a top of the line draining system and there are even drains in both dugouts. We as a team take pride in the field and love playing there.”