Year-Round Schedule Hasn’t Hurt Franklin

After an impressive intersectional victory over El Rancho last week, it appears Franklin’s football team is on track for another successful season.

Not bad for a team on which a majority of the players are currently “off-track.”

Franklin is one of 17 City Section schools on a year-round schedule. Students are divided into A, B and C tracks to ease overcrowding. About 60% of Franklin’s players are on B track and they will not return to classes until November, after an eight-week break.

“Some coaches don’t like the year-round schedule because all of their kids aren’t on campus all day, but we don’t have any problems with it,” Franklin Coach Armando Gonzalez said. “The negative is that the kids on B track don’t really get a summer vacation. When they’re in school, we have summer passing leagues. And when they’re out of school they have to come in for practice.”

At Sepulveda Monroe, nearly 75% of the players on the football team are off-track. At Sun Valley Poly, it’s close to 50%. The percentage varies at schools such as Fremont, South Gate, Garfield and Roosevelt.

“It’s much more manageable,” Monroe Principal Joan Elam said. “It certainly makes it better than trying to have 3,800 students on campus at one time.”

For the most part, football provides few problems for athletes and coaches at year-round schools. The biggest problem occurs during basketball season. In year-round schools, more than one-third of the students take their final exams in mid-to-late December and are not excused until Dec. 23 or 24 for winter break.

Basketball players who are on-track must get special permission to take their finals at other times and/or miss school in order to play in holiday tournaments.

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The football field at Banning High will be renamed Chris Ferragamo Field in honor of the former Pilot coach who retired after the 1986 season. He compiled a 157-36-4 record and led his teams to a record six consecutive 4-A Division championships.

A ceremony is scheduled for Nov. 7 at 6:30 p.m., before Banning’s game against Washington. Former Banning players are encouraged to contact the school for information about the event.