THE COLLEGES / IRENE GARCIA : Site of Cameroon’s World Cup Camp Has Become a Sorry Sight
Jorge Brescia is a frustrated man. He is also fed up and exhausted because his battle has been long and grueling. The worst part is that all the fighting and pleading has fallen on deaf ears.
Brescia, men’s soccer coach at Oxnard College, has tried desperately to preserve two world-class soccer fields built on campus over the summer.
Creating them was part of a plan to bring the city publicity by luring a World Cup team to train there.
Perhaps the coach should be listened to or Oxnard could lose a top-notch sports facility.
Brescia worked for more than a year with city and school officials to complete the project.
He did everything from ensuring the sprinkler system worked to locating funds. The project cost $180,000 and the city of Oxnard dished out only $20,000, so Brescia was a busy man.
The rest of the money and most of the equipment came from private donations. Brescia attended more meetings with potential donors and officials than he cares to remember.
Once the fields were completed, Brescia was instrumental in getting the Cameroon soccer team to set up camp in Oxnard during the World Cup. FIFA, the sport’s governing body, approved the facility and the deal was set.
They were beautiful, lush fields that brought Brescia, an engineer, memories of his 10 years as a professional soccer player in Argentina.
Now the sight of them brings tears to his eyes. Both fields are in horrible condition and the South field is so neglected Brescia considers it a danger zone for his players.
The field has become a large mass of dirt with a few patches of worn grass. A fallen wind screen sits where it first landed and a broken goal post serves as a monkey bar for local kids.
The North field is still being used by the men’s and women’s soccer teams, but it’s not a pretty sight. With no maintenance, Brescia anticipates it will be unplayable in fewer than six months.
“When I see them now, I feel like crying,” he said. “Seriously.”
The bottom line, Brescia says, is that no one wants to provide the maintenance for the facility.
He has contacted everybody he thinks might be able to help: the city officials who asked for his assistance when the project was merely a thought, and Oxnard College president Elise Schneider.
“Nobody cares,” Brescia said. “The World Cup is over so why should we care, right? The show is gone and the media are no longer here. We had press from Japan, Austria, Colombia, Chile . . . worldwide. Now it’s over and there’s nothing more to get out of it.”
The equipment required to keep the fields in playing condition is not expensive, according to Brescia. A mower and sweeper would do it.
“The biggest problem is that there is no person to coordinate all the work,” he said. “The school doesn’t want to do it. I wrote to the president of the school about two months ago and I have not even received a response from her.”
Schneider tells a different story. The facility has not been abandoned, she says, and is being kept up.
She attributes the South field’s dreadful condition to a mystery fungus that has attacked many other Ventura County fields.
“We are working on it,” she said. “They are very important to us. There is nothing to be alarmed about.”
Schneider said regular maintenance has never ceased, but she had no simple answer for the fields’ increasingly poor condition.
“Everyone is ignoring the whole thing and believe me, they know,” Brescia said. “I’ve told them.”
Maybe it’s time for college administrators and city officials to act. The alternative is allowing the fields to deteriorate completely.
That could also mean 180,000 bucks down the drain and in these tough financial times that would be scandalous.
