Football games under the Friday night lights usually hold an atmosphere full of spirit and livelihood; the glaring lights illuminate the field and bleachers, while cheers echo across the school. The swimming pool also brims with activity, with almost nightly swim club practices. However, between these two popular evening spots lies an area sitting in darkness — the school’s tennis courts.
What’s the problem in not having lights? Later in the girls’ team’s fall season, the sun sets early, making it difficult to play tennis past 6 p.m.
In addition, the courts attract a large community of hundreds of players, both children and adults; all eight courts can often be found crowded with athletes from early weekend mornings to sunset.
Despite the popularity of the sport, though, the efforts to implement lights have never come to fruition — in contrast to the football field, where lights were first installed 20 years ago.
Assistant principal Matt Torrens attributes this situation to several core reasons, including the complexity of the installation process and issues in light placement.
“In order to install lights at the tennis courts, we have to go through the proper construction process,” Torrens said. “We just can’t reach out to any company that puts lights up because they are held to a pretty high standard. As a matter of fact, there’s a state agency that oversees all construction, and that adds to the cost and the time.”
Torrens said the school has already spent heavily on campus lighting and now focuses on cost-saving measures. Lights are installed only where essential — like the swimming pool — with no extra lighting coverage to save money.
The decision on which areas receive lighting is also influenced by the larger school modernization process.
“When we modernized the upper field and softball field, we put lights up,” Torrens said. “When we went from a small pool to an Olympic-sized pool, we put lights up in the pool. The tennis courts haven’t needed to be upgraded.”
Along with minimizing costs, the school considers adding lights if it is already part of a worthwhile facility upgrade. Because there isn’t enough space to add additional tennis courts nor any cheap aspect of the courts to upgrade, Torrens believes that adding lights to the tennis courts is not something imperative.
Another question is the placement of the lights. This is complicated because the football stands are right up against the fence surrounding the tennis courts , Torrens said.
Then there are the neighborhood issues. While a large portion of the community plays tennis, there are still others living close to the school who might be negatively affected by the addition of new lighting — for instance, those living on nearby Herriman Avenue who would hear the cracks, thumps and squeaks of late-night play.
“[We need to consider] the community members that live near the school,” Torrens said. ”No one tells them when they buy their house across the street from the high school, there’s going to be something going on there almost 24/7. ”
Additionally, most local schools tend to not have lights. Among Lynbrook, Prospect and Cupertino — only Prospect has lights designed for the tennis courts. Community colleges, however, have made different decisions, as West Valley College and De Anza College both have lights for all of their courts.
Even with all of these issues, many community members and players still hope for them to be installed in the future.
Most notably, Florin Marica, the coach of the school varsity tennis team since 2010, has been a strong advocate for the upgrade.
“I’ve been asking the school for the last 15 years now to add lights on the court; it would be nice for the school and for the community to have lights here too,” Marica said.
Perhaps the largest obstacle to adding the lights, however, is the long list of other renovations the school aims to complete for the future.
More pressing projects include solar panels in the front parking lot, constructing a robotics field and upgrading the heating and cooling systems in the gym, Torrens said. For now, the tennis courts will remain dark at night.
