Dispute Erupts Over Use of High School Track by Residents, Alumni

Every evening, George Sprenger visits South Pasadena High School and runs several miles on the track surrounding the school’s football field. It’s a schedule that Sprenger, 68, has been following since he started living in South Pasadena in 1974. And he credits it for his good health and vigor.

Since the soccer season began in November, however, Sprenger’s daily routine has suffered for the first time in nearly 40 years. On the days that there’s a soccer match underway on the football field, Sprenger says that he and scores of other runners or walkers are barred from exercising on the track, even on its outer edges some 30 yards away from the soccer field.

The reason that is so, explains SPHS Athletics Director Mark Zalin, is that exercisers such as Sprenger are literally running against the rules set by two organizations that govern school sports—the California Interscholastic Federation and the National Federation of High School Sports.

According to the rules set by those governing bodies, explains Zalin, runners and walkers—or anyone else not directly part of a given match being played on the field—are considered spectators. And spectators are not allowed to be on or near the field while a match is underway. 

As Sprenger tells it, however, he and his fellow runners and walkers—many of them seniors and SPHS alumni—have never before been prohibited from exercising on the track since South Pasadena High started a soccer team in 1981.

“We always have had the right to use the track, except during school hours,” he says, adding that an estimated 200 different people exercise on the track weekly from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. “There’s never been an issue that we’re a distraction to the players or have interfered with the games. 

This isn’t the first time, however, that the use of the track by individuals who aren’t SPHS students has been questioned. In 2007, following a similar controversy, about 75 walkers and runners—“everybody who showed up during about a week”— signed a petition and handed it to school authorities, says Sprenger.

The petitioners had a meeting with South Pasadena Unified School District Superintendent Joel Shapiro, then Athletics Director Ralph Punaro, SPUSD Board Member Elisabeth Eilers and SPHS Principal Janet Anderson.

“We agreed we would not use the track during Varsity boys soccer games,” says Sprenger, adding that the deal continued until this year, when the boys soccer coach asked him and other runners to stop using the track even during the Junior Varsity boys games and the girls soccer games.

The entire issue came to public attention this past Monday when Henk Friezer, a longtime photographer of news and events in South Pasadena, wrote a blog on South Pasadena Patch.

Titled “Disappointment About School Reneging on Agreement,” the blog argued that none of the conditions that restrict use of the track during football games exist during soccer games.

“It is understandable that the restriction is in effect during football games, when cheerleaders and bands utilize the track and adjacent area to the field,” wrote Friezer, who has been walking regularly on the track for years. “There is also a stadium full of spectators, so walkers would definitely interfere with the game atmosphere. We hope the district sees the logic and goes back to the original agreement.”

Sprengers concurs. “From our perspective, important people on the school board and the [previous] athletics director had all agreed to this plan,” he says. “Now, all of a sudden this coach, who is supervised by all these people has, as far as we can tell, changed the policy—and that’s what causing all the concern among all the runners.”

Zalin, who joined SPHS as athletics director in early 2012, says he’s unaware of any kind of agreement that the extracurricular runners and walkers might have had with school authorities. 

“I’m very new here and I’m just following the rules,” he adds. “We try to prioritize student activities first, and I think that supersedes any other thing that’s going on.”