With bulldozers replacing bleachers and practice fields turned into gravel lots, athletes at Francis Lewis High School are finding themselves displaced and their seasons disrupted as construction overhauls their once familiar home turf.
For many, the biggest concern isn’t just the inconvenience — it’s the impact on performance. One athlete noted that having a better field could make a big difference, explaining that efficient practices lead to better games.
“Now we have to travel five minutes [and] walk to Peck Park,” flag football player Boone-Majors Taliyah said. “The field is not very good because it’s just grass and l when it rains, it’s muddy [and] then we slip.”
The Girls’ Flag Football team finished the regular season with a 3-7 record, placing 6th in the 2A Manhattan-Queens division. Taliyah played in 7 games this year, with two TDs and 12 total points for the team. Taliyah believes that having “efficient” practices leads to a better performance during games.
“What you’re doing in practice you put to your games and I feel like if we are able to have an efficient practice, then our games will turn out much better,” Taliyah said.
The Boys’ Varsity Baseball team has also been practicing on a different field on Hillside Avenue, which takes approximately 15 minutes from FLHS. Parents have been volunteering to take students that finish school late to the field for practice. Teammates acknowledged that some challenges are simply part of the game.
“The only problem is the field conditions because there are some certain grab balls that take bad hops but it’s part of baseball,” teammate Michael Alba said. “It’s something we gotta deal with when we get to the big leagues.”
“We usually have a certain routine that we go to every time we go to our field, but now that this is going under construction, it takes a long time to travel to the field that we usually go to,” Alba added. “We still do what we can do to get better, no matter what.”
This season, the Boys’ Varsity Baseball team finished the regular season with a 12-1 record and first place in the 3A Eastern Division. This is a huge improvement from their 5-9 record last year and 4th place finish in the standings.
“I believe last year nobody on our team really stepped up and became the voice among the players,” coach Gerloven said. “They are playing with more energy, more enthusiasm, and are much more cognitively engaged in comparison to last year.”
In order to help the team improve from last year, coach Gerloven selected two captains to help establish a different culture in the way they train and how they play in games.
“This year we have named separate captains, Derek Young and Renos Pagiatakis, who have helped to establish a different culture,” Coach Gerloven said.
Preparing for the unpredictability of game day requires more than just batting practice. The coaching staff designs each session with purpose, alternating between game-like scenarios and targeted skill work.
“Our practices are reflective of what we see in our games,” Coach Gerloven added. “Some days we will work drills designed to mimic the flow of the game, while other days we will focus on more repetition during skill building activities.”
As the construction continues to disrupt the flow of Spring sports, it becomes clear everyone has a responsibility to keep pushing forward, whether it’s securing wins on the field or managing the obstacles off of it. That mindset though, is being tested more than ever, as each department grapples with how to balance their duties with the challenges ahead.
“Everybody has a single responsibility to get our work done and, getting our Ws in baseball, so it’s something that we have to handle,” Alba said. “If we can’t handle it, then we should not be on the team anyway.”
