A practice field installed more than two years ago is no longer safe and Coupeville residents are looking to fix the problem.

The field, which the school district installed in July 2005, has degraded and parents have said its condition has caused athletes to sustain injuries, primarily ankle sprains.

“My first and foremost thought is that we need some place safe for the students to practice,” Superintendent Patty Page said during a recent school board meeting.

Because of its condition, athletes now confine their practice to one-half of the field. They also practice on Mickey Clark Field, where games take place.

Student board member Andre Martin described the practice field as “kind of a wreck,” while practicing on the competition field tears it up.

Due to the school district’s budget situation, it doesn’t have the money needed to get the field back up to snuff.

“The bottom line is that we, as a school district, don’t have the money for this,” school board President Kathleen Anderson said.

The school district has several other higher-priority items it needs to complete first. Those are the covered play area and security improvements at the elementary school.

In light of that, Coupeville resident Dan Miranda is trying to round up the community support needed to pay for installation of a new, but smaller, practice field near the current one.

He said the new field will help both boy and girls soccer programs. He has three children participating in various soccer programs in Coupeville.

“It will benefit a lot of kids in the future,” Miranda said. He hopes to have a more detailed proposal ready for the school board by the beginning of April.

The practice field, which is located near the corner of Engle and Terry roads, was needed because the old fields were destroyed to make room for the new high school. It cost the school district nearly $20,000 to install the practice field.

However, officials quickly ran into problems because there wasn’t a way to water the fields. The school district ran afoul of town officials when school employees tapped a town fire hydrant to supply water to the field, which borders town limits.

Miranda said the new field would include sprinklers to water the field. The school district also recently drilled a well so now it has a water source to supply its fields.