As a looming budget crisis hits the Santa Ana Unified School District, the intermediate school athletic program faces significant changes. Since the 2021-22 school year, teams played three travel games, visiting or hosting other schools, before the annual end-of-season tournament. The initial sports this year, flag football and girls volleyball, had no travel games. Now, it looks as though the upcoming teams will have two travel games.
Athletic Director Dr. David Diaz said, “Laticia Alverado, she is in charge of the Engage (after-school) program, and also the new athletic director, who is in charge of athletics for the district, Damon Voight are the key players who made the decision.” Aside from the intermediate school sports program, hundreds of S.A.U.S.D. teachers were laid off because of the shrinking budget.
Last year, MacArthur had three travel games for every sport, except for baseball and softball, which had at least four because of a longer season. Also, neither cross-country nor track and field have any travel meets other than the district tournaments.
Seventh grader Anthony R. said, “It affected me by not being able to practice enough. It felt bad to barely have travel games because we couldn’t really understand other people’s play moves, so we couldn’t get better by ourselves. It felt really bad to barely have practice because we felt unprepared; everybody on the team felt like that.”
With a few minor changes, the athletic opportunities still include basketball, volleyball, softball and baseball, flag football, soccer, street hockey, cross country, and track and field. Last year’s initial run of pickleball will not continue this year.
Seventh-grader Charly L. said, “It was kinda different. I wouldn’t say it was the worst thing, but it was still pretty good. It kinda made me feel, I’m gonna have to say worse, because there were really no games, and I hoped there were games because I was really looking forward to that.”
Aside from athletics, MacArthur offers a robust choice of clubs that were featured in club rush on September 11 during lunch, and meetings were held on various days the following week.