Oxnard Can Finally Bask in the Lights

Be it ever so, er, imperfect, there’s no place like home.

Finally, after a year of delays and red tape, the Oxnard High football team will play under the lights in its new stadium on the school’s year-old campus tonight in a nonleague game against Channel Islands.

“It’s going to create a lot of positive emotions,” said Courtney Palmore, a senior running back. “A lot of guys are going to be fired up.”

Palmore and his teammates, however, will remain without comforts common to most facilities, not the least of which is a locker room.

The $900,000 stadium also lacks a snack bar, restrooms and press box.

In lieu of a dressing rooms, players and coaches prepare for practices and games inside three 40-foot-long storage bins that are located behind one end zone.

But the new digs aren’t as bad as one might imagine. Each “locker room” is equipped with electricity, carpeting and about 50 lockers.

“There are worse places,” said Wesley Morimune, Oxnard coach. “It’s a brand new field and the lights are adequate. The trailers, you can’t fit all the guys in at one time. The kids have learned to share. They [dress] in shifts.”

Said Palmore: “We’ve made the best of it.”

Additional construction is intended but a shortage of funds has stalled those plans, said Dick Canady, assistant superintendent of business services for the Oxnard Union High School District.

“There’s no time frame,” Canady said. “You need to bear in mind that no stadium had those things when they were built. They all came later and, in most cases, those funds were raised by the school itself.”