In a gesture of empathy toward graduating seniors after a year of darkness and COVID-19, the field lights were switched on for one night at San Marin High School for Saturday’s last varsity home football game of the season.
Officials from Novato Unified School District and the neighborhood group Coalition to Save San Marin agreed to turn on the field lights for the final season game against San Rafael’s Terra Linda High School. The one-time olive branch was a signal they are continuing to negotiate a settlement in the longstanding dispute that has left the lights dark for most of the seniors’ high school careers.
“This is a great milestone in our relationship with the Coalition to Save San Marin,” Superintendent Kris Cosca said in a joint statement. “It is a sign of building good faith, goodwill and trust between us.”
Mike Joly, chair of the Coalition to Save San Marin, said the symbolic gesture acknowledges the struggles the high school’s students and parents have faced over the past year of lockdown.
“CSSM recognizes and empathizes with the sacrifices San Marin students and parents — particularly the Class of 2021– have endured this past year during the COVID pandemic,” Joly said in the joint statement.
San Marin raced out to a 35-0 halftime lead over Terra Linda and won the game 48-8.
With a parking lot that was probably as full as it has been in over a year and traffic spilling out onto the street, enthusiasm was high for San Marin fans as they prepared to watch a rare nighttime football game. The homestands were already filling up 35 minutes before kickoff — a clear sign of the anticipation.
For Albert Silva, 62, and a former resident of Marin County, he knows how special it is to suit up and play under the lights. During his time at St. Vincent High School from 1974 to 1977, Silva featured as a running back on the varsity team.
“I think it’s important for the future just to get to that feel at nighttime,” Silva said, who was attending the game to watch his fiancè Lina’s daughter, Sophia, as a cheerleader for San Marin. “Because at daytime, it’s a daytime game. But nighttime, it’s a different feel. I think it’s important for them to experience that going forward, because if some of these kids go off to bigger colleges, they already have that in their pocket. So it’s important to have that.”
“We had night games — and that was neat to be under the lights. It is important for them to happen. These are young kids and they have their future ahead of them, so you gotta think about them. And especially in these times, who knows when it’ll be over. Something like this is huge.”
Silva said as long as they set a strict curfew, 10 p.m., there should be no issue with hosting more games under the lights in the future.
“I think if the games don’t go beyond that curfew time, it’s fine. I think that’s a great resolution. Put a deadline on it so they do experience nighttime games.”
Since its installation in 2018, the $1.5 million field light system has been officially used only once before. The rest of the time, the fields have been dark due to a series of legal challenges over the environmental impacts of light and noise to neighboring families.
The district has continued to upgrade the system to mitigate the impacts, but the details were still under debate in a series of court proceedings.
The one past use, at a night game in October 2019, was deemed precipitous by the courts and set the whole controversy back for months. After arriving at a legal stalemate last year, the two sides began talks in January to see if they could reach a settlement.
“This will mean so much to these kids — especially the seniors, who will be playing and cheering their last home football game for San Marin High School,” said football coach and athletic booster Tony Franceschini. “It doesn’t get any better than that — especially after all they’ve been through the last year with COVID.”
San Marin athletic booster Dennis Mancuso agreed. He and Franceschini co-founded the “Lights for San Marin” Facebook page.
“This gesture of goodwill from the coalition is a testament of San Marin being a community and not just a high school,” Mancuso added. “We may not always agree on everything, but we all truly care for our kids and each other.”
San Marin students — as with all Marin public schools — transitioned to remote learning in spring 2020 and have been doing remote learning for nearly one year. Students returned to the high school in March.
Sports, and specifically football, have been on hold and just recently started playing again, district officials said.
The lights dispute has centered on the coalition’s concerns about to the environmental impacts of light and noise to the neighborhood. They have challenged the district’s environmental impact report on those issues.
The district has maintained that it hired the best professionals in the athletic field lighting industry to consult on ways to upgrade its system and mitigate impacts.
In late January 2019, Marin Judge Roy Chernus agreed with the coalition that the district’s initial EIR was flawed. He ordered the district to address the concerns. The district appealed that decision, but also set to work to revise the environmental impact report and upgrade the lights and sound system.
By December 2019, Chernus said the district did adequately address all the environmental concerns in its draft update environmental impact report completed over the course of the year. But he said his court lacked jurisdiction to order the lights to go on, because the case was still under appeal.
In April 2020, a three-judge panel denied the district’s appeal. That left the case on hold until the two sides began meeting early this year to see if they could work out a settlement agreement.
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