In order to increase safety measures for the upcoming spring season, the athletic department installed new nets and backstops on the athletic fields.
The athletic department, Vienna Youth Soccer, Vienna Youth Incorporated Lacrosse and athletic boosters collectively funded the new nets that help make the fields and areas around them safer. Director of student activities Joe Swarm said the athletic department put the nets in place for safety purposes.
“The whole point for all of this is to make things more safe around here for kids and for community members,” Swarm said. “[The nets] are used around the clock, [and] if it’s not our school using it, it’s the youth groups that are using the fields. You have little kids. It’s just a lesser chance for somebody to get hurt. And that’s our job, […] to keep people from getting injured. [The nets] are just a way to help.”
Besides making games safer for athletes and spectators, the nets on fields serve as a way to maintain the progression of games by preventing balls from flying over fences. Junior and soccer player Paulina Maldonado said the new nets will likely help with making games go quicker, especially for JV soccer, which does not have people to retrieve the soccer balls like varsity.
“It will probably make [games] a little faster,” Maldonado said. “Especially since the bigger problem is with JV, [since] they have a shorter game, so [nets] will help not waste time.”
While Maldonado said she is happy with the new nets, she said their small size is a problem, as they cannot stop high balls.
“The one problem is that they made them kind of short, so during games if we don’t have a spare ball next to the net or anything it’s going to go over the fence and we’re going to have to run around [the net to get them],” Maldonado said. “So it kind of makes it a little more of an inconvenience because it’s so short, and sometimes people are hitting really powerful and high balls so it’s going to go over.”
The athletic department installed nets on the baseball field in order to prevent foul balls and popups from flying into the tennis courts, parking lots and other fields. Swarm said 10 to 15 balls on average would go into spectator stands and other athletic fields. FCPS inspected the fields and decided that new nets were necessary.
“I’ve seen people [get] hit,” Swarm said. “We’ve had the risk assessed by Risk Management in Fairfax County. We had safety and security [officials] come out and put signs up ‘beware of balls,’ but that wasn’t good enough for our community, myself and the administration here.”
Junior and baseball player Andrew Milhorn said the nets not only make the fields less dangerous, but also more professional looking.
“I think the nets being there are really twofold,” Milhorn said. “It makes the field more safe for people walking by as well as for people playing softball or in the press box as well as making our fields look a lot better.”
2019-01-23