Club sports athletes are concerned about Cal Poly’s St. Patrick’s Day music festival.
The Morning on the Green — A Mustang Music Festival will be held on fields four and five of the Lower Sports Complex Fields. Club athletes voiced concerns about the venue.
Last year, after the festival, Audrey Johnson, agricultural business senior and Women’s Rugby team captain said there was a lot of trash and hay left on the field and the grass was ruined.
“We spend hours here everyday practicing with our team,” Johnson said. “And last year when the concert happened here right on our fields, it caused a lot of damages on the field that hasn’t been able to be recovered since last year.”
Fields four and five are the Women’s Rugby team’s game fields, according to Johnson. They practice on fields six and seven, which University Spokesperson Keegan Koberl said will not be blocked off or used for the concert, but these fields are a safe dispersal location.
Last year, the festival used fields six and seven but the orientation of the concert was different and limited capacity, according to university spokesperson Keegan Koberl.
Koberl said it is inevitable some students will walk across the fields to get to the venue and the edge of fields six and seven will be used for lines, but the majority of the space in fields six and seven won’t be touched.
“It’s inevitable to not have damage on field six and seven because of the pedestrians walking on there and obviously it can be damaged more based on the weather,” Johnson said. “Even though we don’t practice on the fields that they are going to have the concert on, they are still our games fields and a lot of other teams also still practice on those fields as well and they are used in just as much capacity by other teams.”
This year, the capacity of the festival is set to be 14,000 people, which is more than double the capacity of last year, which was 5,000 people.
Johnson talked about the unevenness on the field after the festival due to use, which is a risk to the athletes.
“It is a danger to play on a grass field that isn’t well maintenanced and repaired,” Johnson said.
Koberl said organizers will pay close attention to trash and have no plans to use hay. Areas of the field that require driving will be covered with a drivable field protection solution.
“The university is sensitive to how this event might impact others in our community,” Koberl said in an email to Mustang News. “The university is making a more concerted effort this year to maintain the field throughout planning and set-up and during and after the concert.”
Athletes like Johnson and Megan Wong, who is a member of the women’s ultimate frisbee team, said that when they lose access to the fields due to the festival, it is hard to find other spaces to practice.
Fields four and five at the Lower Sports Complex Fields will be closed from March 8 to 16 but the other fields in the complex are planned to remain open, according to Koberl. Wong said the ultimate frisbee club uses fields four and five.
“I think that’s a really quick turnaround for them to clean everything up,” Johnson said. “I hope that they have an efficient plan to be able to restore the fields as best as possible to their state that they were in. But I appreciate that they are cleaning up the fields early.”
Wong said with their fields closed, they might try to use other field space if available, but any amount of fields being closed is going to force all teams who practice on four and five to try to find a new location.
“There are going to be a lot more teams probably vying for the spots at fields six and seven,” Wong said. “We are going to miss out on three of our practices, and we are coming up to our series, our competitive national level series in the spring, so every practice is super valuable at this point.”
Johnson said there are limited facilities for club sports on campus.
When the Women’s Rugby Team cannot utilize the fields at the Lower Sports Complex, they try to find space on Doerr Field or the intramural fields, which are both turf. She said it is difficult.
“I think that [Morning on the Green] is a great event to draw students in, keep them safe, less destruction in the community and so I think it’s great,” Johnson said. “But I think that it’s really just neglecting the destruction that’s here, that affects hundreds of Cal Poly students. That’s really just being overlooked.”
Wong said the university did their best with putting straw and boards down last year to minimize the damages but with that number of people and traffic, it’s inevitable that there is going to be damage.
“We did notice a lot of extra holes, it was a lot sandier than usual, there was less grass to play on, so that made it just a little less comfortable for us during our practices,” Wong said.
Wong said ideally they would move the concert to a venue like Spanos Stadium or another alternative location or open up additional field space for athletes to use while the fields are closed. She also said she wants to see them do better at controlling the crowd, after last year the festival was overrun with a crowd surge.
Johnson said that club sports are a little bit neglected on campus.
“I think that it’s super important to recognize that we are in season, and we’re representing Cal Poly and playing with the Cal poly logo on our chest still and working really hard,” Johnson said.
Johnson worries last year’s results will repeat themselves.
“If it ends like last year, they’re just going to be destroyed again,” Johnson said. “It’s going to be again dangerous to practice on.”