Soccer Players Booted to Make Way for School on San Dieguito Field

The goal posts and the well-used baseball paths on the Fairbanks Ranch sports field are giving way to bulldozers and construction workers--to the delight of some local residents and the dismay of a lot of San Dieguito youngsters.

The 10-acre tract at the corner of El Apajo and San Dieguito Road, which for years has been the playing field for local youngsters during the Little League and Bobby Sox baseball seasons and for the fast-growing San Dieguito Youth Soccer League, will be off-limits in coming months while the Solana Beach School District builds an elementary school there.

Fairbanks Ranch residents, who have complained for years that the weekend sports contests and the accompanying mob of youngsters, parents, coaches and fans were inappropriate in the quiet, secluded and affluent community, breathed sighs of relief.

Youth sports leaders, on the other hand, gave sighs of disappointment as bulldozers carved out the footings for the new Fairbanks Ranch Elementary School.

As Dr. Raymond Edman, superintendent of the Solana Beach School District, turned a symbolic spadeful of earth marking the start of construction of the $4.2-million school building at ceremonies Monday, he acknowledged that the long-awaited elementary school meant the sacrifice of the coveted playing fields that youths from throughout coastal North County had used, legally and illegally, for more than a decade.

“When the construction is finished (by early 1993), there will be one soccer field and two baseball fields on the site,” Edman said. “But until then, there is no way we can let the youngsters out there safely with all this construction equipment around. We don’t want to bury a third baseman by mistake.”

Gary Pulaski, school district director of maintenance and operations, said the district “has always done everything it could” to support youth sports, and would continue to do so. But, he said, the school district comes first.

The relatively flat tract was given to the school district in 1979 by Watt Industries as a future elementary school site, Edman said. At first, it was used without school district permission for sports events and later with school officials’ blessings until four years ago when unhappy neighbors blew the whistle on the games.

School officials were ordered to oust the young players from the future school site in 1987 because, county planners said, the district had not obtained a necessary county permit needed for such “accessory uses” as sporting events on the increasingly popular field.

The district board of trustees hired an attorney to fight the county and preserve the sports field, and with the aid of County Supervisor Susan Golding, won the battle. A county ordinance was approved exempting vacant future school sites from the expensive county permitting procedure for uses such as youth sports.

Now, however, Edman said the youngsters must find somewhere else to play their games because the district has obtained matching state funds to build the new school.

He said there had been “a little bit of concern expressed by neighbors” in Fairbanks Ranch when grading for the school building began. “It seems that no matter how many hearings are held, no matter how much citizen input we get, there are still people out there that don’t know that a school has been planned there for years.”

Barbara Bouzan, a Fairbanks Ranch resident whose home overlooks the site, said she was pleased that the school finally was becoming a reality and that the noisy playing field was history.

“I’ve seen the new school in Solana Hills and it is a very nice building with beautiful grounds, and there’s nowhere near the noise and traffic we get here at the playing field,” she said. “I think that the school building will be an improvement.”

But Richard Ross is worried about “all those kids out there with no place to play.” Every school ground and ball field is booked up with local teams, he said, “and there just aren’t very many places left.”

Ross’s main interest is with the Surf Soccer league, which hosts a tournament bringing 250 teams from across the United States and several foreign countries to the North County coast each August. The tournament fills every available soccer field from Carlsbad south to the UC San Diego campus, he said, “and we had to turn away another 55 teams because we couldn’t find the space.”

The San Dieguito Youth Soccer League has about 5,500 youngsters enrolled, “and it’s a real problem for all of us, finding places to practice and play,” Ross said.

Loss of the Fairbanks Ranch field and the expected loss of the Earl Warren Junior High School fields to Solana Beach city recreation programs is almost an insurmountable problem, Ross said.

“We have been talking to Pardee (Construction Co.) about using some of those vacant graded pads in Carmel Valley,” Ross said, “and we are working on our ‘Field of Dreams,’ ” a proposed 15- to 17-field soccer complex in the San Dieguito River valley.

“We have our plans, but we need the approval of the city (of San Diego) and the county and the joint powers agency which is planning to turn the river valley into an open space park. Our fate is in the hands of the politicians,” Ross said.

Little League and Bobby Sox baseball teams that have used the Fairbanks Ranch field in past years are in an even greater time squeeze, Ross said. Soccer season gets under way in July but baseball season starts next month.

“It’s not the school district’s fault,” Ross said. “They have been very, very good to all youth sports groups. But it’s a real problem, losing the playing field.”