Athletes on the women’s field hockey team at the University of California, Berkeley, are considering a lawsuit against the school for taking away their field to build a parking garage without providing a replacement.
The field hockey players were told during the fall 2013 semester they would lose their field at the end of the season so the school could build a parking garage. UC Berkeley promised the players a new field, but didn’t start construction on it until earlier this month. The university did build a replacement field in spring 2014, but it used the wrong kind of turf. The men’s football and lacrosse teams can use that field, and indeed are doing so, but the women’s field hockey team has to play on the turf of their rival, Stanford University — an hour’s drive away, on the other side of the Bay Area.
Athletes say the extra two hours of travel time per practice has cut into their sleep schedules and forced some of them to drop classes. Plus, the students say, it’s degrading to have to play on their rival’s home field.
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Lee said that at this point, the players feel demoralized about the support they’re receiving from the university.
“We come to our school thinking we want to represent our school in the best way possible,” she said. “But now, it’s like we can’t represent our school at all, because it feels like they aren’t supporting us in any way.”
