Dreams of fields.

"If you build it, they will come." And they are in greater numbers than ever before. How do you handle play time and practice time for the growing number of sports teams in your school?

About 15 years ago, administrators for the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township, Ind., began running into scheduling problems related to the athletic facilities at the 2,700-student Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis. The problem worsened during the early 1990s, and by 1995 had become

The Space Crunch Increases

The school has junior varsity and varsity teams in 20 sports, according to Priscilla Dillow, the school's athletic director. Ben Davis also accommodates other groups that require large group instruction spaces and athletic fields, including the band, the color guard, ROTC training, student dance groups and so on.

"Everyone, to some extent, gets short shrift," Dillow says. "All of the groups have to take turns practicing early, then late. One week, a girls' team will practice after school, and the boys' team will practice after dinner. Then they will switch.

"Ideally, everyone should be able to practice after school, whether it's the band, the choir or the athletic teams. We want the kids to get home at a decent hour for dinner and then have study time after school. But we just don't have the space."

Compared to other schools, Ben Davis appears to have a lot of indoor and outdoor athletic space. Indoors, the school's main gymnasium seats 4,200 people and accommodates competition for basketball, wrestling, volleyball and other indoor athletic events. Two upper deck gyms in the facility provide practice areas. A six-lane swimming pool with a separate diving well accommodates water sports.

Outside, the school grounds include two softball diamonds, two baseball diamonds, two soccer fields, two practice football fields and one football stadium. There are also four lighted basketball courts outside, along with ten tennis courts, two outdoor volleyball courts and two softball diamonds used only for physical education.

Despite all of these facilities, space is growing tighter, as the school continues to introduce new sports. In soccer, for instance, Ben Davis has boys' and girls' junior varsity and varsity teams, plus a team for ninth-grade boys. "We don't have a ninth-grade girls' team yet," says Dillow. "But we're organizing one, and as soon as we have enough players, we'll start practice."

Dillow also says that Ben Davis administrators want to provide more access to community groups interested in using the school's athletic facilities, but can't, given the demands of the student population.

Ben Davis is not alone in facing these problems. A number of trends at the middle school and high school level have begun to tax available athletic facilities in many districts across the country. According to Chuck Warner, vice president of DeJong & Associates, Inc., the largest educational facility planning firm in the U.S., these trends include growing student populations, a growing interest in sports among younger students, rising popularity of traditional and new sports among high school students, the growth of women's sports and a growing interest in community use of school facilities.

Setting Priorities

In 1995, Ben Davis began the process of dealing with these problems. The school formed a committee called Tactic 3 and opened membership to anyone interested in helping to plan the school's future. To solicit members, committee organizers advertised in local newspapers and on local radio stations, while making daily announcements to the student body and academic and administrative staffs. Thirty-three people signed on: 18 staff members, 12 community representatives and three students.

The committee met weekly for four months. "We listened to speakers, shared ideas and articles, and met with community experts and leaders," says Dillow, who headed Tactic 3's sub-committee on facilities. "We also visited schools across the state with populations similar to ours. We videotaped the facilities at every school we visited and eventually edited a highlight tape of what we had seen. Our research included all aspects of educational facility planning from classrooms and technology to athletics and community use."

At the end of the research process, the committee issued a report listing a series of 30 "possibilities" for a Ben Davis renovation. The list covered classroom renovations, additions, and storage areas, technology, administrative offices, site planning, community use, athletics and other areas. Five of the 30 items on the list related to the school's athletic facilities.

The committee summarized its recommendations by saying that: "Ben Davis High School must take 'giant' steps in an expedient manner to provide the type of environment that is necessary for technological advances and to meet the student curricular and extracurricular needs. The facilities must accommodate our changing world and reflect our desire to make the Ben Davis HS facility a focal and integral part of the community."

In short, the Tactic 3 committee framed the academic, administrative, athletic and other priorities for the school's renovation.

"Tactic 3 became the basis for the facility programming that the architects used to develop the final facility design," says David DeValeria, associate principal with Schenkelshultz Architects of Indianapolis, Ind., the architectural firm handling the Ben Davis project.

In 1995, the district took the school's renovations to the public in the form of bond issue. The initiative passed, and the community has raised $80 million to fund a major renovation of Ben Davis and four of the district's elementary schools.

While no funding breakdown is available, the renovations to Ben Davis's athletic facilities include the following:

* New locker rooms for physical education classes and for the sports teams.

* New training room.

* New weight room, located in the existing gym.

* Pool renovations that include the addition of a classroom and locker rooms.

* New aerobics room.

* New multipurpose activity center with four basketball courts; a six-lane track; and painted lines to accommodate volleyball, tennis and badminton.

* New wrestling room.

* New cardio-vascular workout room with bicycles and machine weights.

* New field sports building with locker rooms, one-third larger than the existing building.

* Relocation of two soccer fields and the addition of a third.

* Two new softball diamonds.

* New parking lots and press boxes for varsity soccer, baseball and softball.

* Six new tennis courts.

Living With the Results

The Ben Davis community has been living with severe space constraints for more than a decade now. The renovation work, which got underway in June of this year, will actually make the problems worse for a while.

"We'll have to live with scheduling problems for three more years," Dillow says. "For example, we won't have any soccer fields until next fall. They are all being seeded. We've found a local park where we can practice at no cost. We've also rented a facility for six home soccer matches, three for the boys and three for the girls." Dillow will make similar arrangements for other sports as needed, throughout the renovation.

Will the finished project accommodate everyone's needs comfortably? "We'll be closer to being able to hold school-sponsored activities after school," Dillow says. "But we're a large school, and we'll always have requests for space in the evening. We intend to limit those activities, but I doubt if we will be able to eliminate them."

In the end, setting program priorities in a school is a messy process. No program gets everything it needs, because all programs have some contribution to make to a well-rounded educational offering. The Ben Davis approach seems to work because it is based on an acknowledgment that while no program can have everything, it is possible to find ways to give all programs enough.

RELATED ARTICLE: STATE GUIDELINES AFFECT ATHLETICS

Dealing with a shortage of athletic facilities is a microcosm of the larger challenge faced by educational planners looking forward to the next century: How will districts define the scope of a well-rounded, appropriate educational offering? What is the proper balance between academics and other components of a modern educational experience? What role do athletics play in education? Are athletics more or less important than music, theater and the arts? The answers to these difficult questions will affect policy and funding decisions at both the state and local level.

Several states have begun to wrestle with these ideas in attempts to set educational guidelines for future expenditures. Last year, for example, DeJong & Associates, Inc., an educational facility planning firm and an architectural firm specializing in school design, participated in a series of meetings led by the Ohio School FAcilities Commission. The discussions aimed to develop programmatic design guidelines for new elementary, middle and high school facilities in the state.

Ohio officials wanted to develop standards that will promote equity among the state's schools. "These standards will necessarily affect funding priorities," says DeJong's Chuck Warner. "In the area of athletics, for example, we said that athletics are an important part of a comprehensive educational program."

In the course of the Ohio meetings, the group decided that gymnasiums; locker rooms; and multi-purpose rooms for weights, aerobics and other general athletic activities met criteria that would enable the state to promote equity in athletic facilities for schools. On the other hand, facilities devoted to particular sports such as wrestling fell into categories where priorities could be better set by local decision-makers.

In this way, Ohio is setting funding priorities from which any district can benefit, while leaving decisions about what sports to emphasize (if any) up to local officials.

"Priorities may differ from state to state and district to district," Warner says. "For example, recent news reports have talked about the need for math and science teachers in California. These academic areas may receive priority consideration in California because that is where improvements are necessary. At the same time, in Indiana, basketball is an important athletic priority that may receive special consideration at the state level"

In the end, however, state priorities represent guidelines, and the final balance among academic, athletic and other district offerings grow out of priorities set by district administrators and local communities.

Michael A. Fickes is a Baltimore-based freelance writer.