As the spring sports season has started, faculty attempt to deter students from tracking mud into the building.
“I don’t think it should be the teachers’ responsibility because they shouldn’t always remind us to wipe off our shoes,” Brooks Vernon, an eighth grader enrolled in spring sports, said. “I think we are at the age now that it should be a societal norm.”
Vernon has been registered in fall and spring sports as long as he has been at UPrep and has experience with practicing on Dahl Field. He notices that all grades, especially sixth graders who don’t know the norms, are the ones who don’t clean their shoes. In addition, he knows that students don’t want to stand outside to brush off their shoes.
“People don’t have the patience to wait and just feel like they have to smack their shoes off and walk inside,” Vernon said.
One problem is when students come in from recess, according to Director of Facilities Robert Thom.
“The challenge here in a school environment is you have very limited time in between, let’s say your recess and your next class, or your recess or your lunch, where you’re trying to get to that next spot fairly rapidly, where maybe you don’t have time to sit there and brush your feet,” Thom said.
On a daily basis, Thom and his maintenance crew expect a lot of work regarding cleaning up the entrance.
“As a maintenance crew,” Thom said, “we must sweep up mud particles on the floor four to five times a week.”
In the after-school hours, there is always a cleaning crew of six to eight that UPrep hires to maintain and clean each classroom. But during the sports seasons, staff members like Director of Athletics Rebecca Moe sweep the entrance when necessary.
“At four o’clock in the afternoon, a bunch of soccer players come in, and there’s those clumps,” Moe said. “I know if they’re not picked up, someone’s gonna step on it, and then it’s gonna get tracked over to the gym.”