School administrators take student safety seriously. Even prior to today’s announcement that the varsity football game would be played at 6pm instead of 7:30pm due to expected weather issues, school officials planned the new stadium with students’ safety in mind, said Rolly Vazquez, athletic director.

Vazquez says he realizes how much weather can impact outdoor events.

“We started [monitoring the weather] yesterday,” Vazquez said. “We had a freshman game yesterday that got called after the third quarter because of the lightning.”

Vazquez and other administrators were watching the weather all day, but a decision to move the game times didn’t come until 2pm today.

With the new stadium, Vazquez says he wants students to be familiar with what to do in case school officials need to evacuate the field.

How will you know if it’s ‘not safe’?

“[If the weather condition is considered unsafe,] we will have everybody evacuate. There will be announcement made by the announcer. They will indicate that we have to clear the stadium; no one can be out there,” Vazquez said. “So… you can go to your cars [or] we offer the field house to be available for those who need it. You can enter through Door 27; please go to the east-most part of the school, the field
Carolyn Wagner
house. Everybody please report there if you need a place to go.”

What has the improvement of the stadium contributed to safety and evacuation?

“These bleachers now have four exits so people can get out of there in a more comfortable, easier, and faster fashion. There’s two on the ends [of the stadium] and two down in the back. There’s also obviously more walkways. The areas are so much wider now because before, if you’d walk behind that fence area, there was no way for the people exiting the south end to go behind, so we had to open up the gates and let everyone on the track so everyone could exit through the big gates,” Vazquez said.

Has anything changed from previous protocol for evacuating the stadium?

“One of the problems [with an incident from last year] was the bleachers and only the two ways of getting out of the bleachers… so that’s a little bit of why these bleachers have the four exits,” Vazquez said. He went on to say that, when the weather cleared and it was safe for people to return to the bleachers, “when we left it was a mass exodus and everybody wanted a good seat — with the bleachers the way they were, everybody was racing to try and get the best seat and wanted to get back on the field.”

“It’s hard to control people’s urges to want to get back on the field,” Vazquez said about the incident last year that left one student injured. To help protect students from a repeat of that event, Vazquez says, “We’ll probably let everybody know that we’re opening up the gates [but] we’re not just going to open up en mass. We’ll have you come in in an orderly manner, so we’ll probably close the gates a little bit more so they’re not [pushing].”

Vazquez stressed that school officials will communicate instructions to fans before they leave so no one feels confused or feels the need to rush back to the stadium.

“It’s informing them more [in] here and letting them know,” Vazquez said.

Vazquez also noted that with the new stadium having so much more seating, he doesn’t believe students will need to rush back to the stadium since there is space enough for everyone to easily find a seat.

Are there any other safety issues students should be aware of?

Vazquez encourages students to not stand on the new bleacher seats. He notes that the walkway between seats is twice as big as the seats themselves, and he says that students should stand where it’s safe, meaning stand in the walkway not on the bleacher seats.

“If you do get up there, it’s [only] a foot wide, so when kids are standing on that and they’re jumping and they’re pushing and they’re shoving, it gets pretty packed up there,” Vazquez said. “Especially if it gets wet, it could get slippery and they could maybe lose their balance and kids could fall over, so having the nice … walkways is going to be a benefit to us.”