Crenshaw High still waiting for gooey substance to be removed from football field

It has been about seven weeks since Crenshaw High informed the Los Angeles Unified School District about a problem with its 2-year-old all-weather football field. Students were seeing a strange gooey substance on their cleats, coach Robert Garrett said.

The field has been off limits, forcing the team to practice on the baseball field. No games will be played on the field until it is repaired. It wasn’t the only all-weather field in LAUSD that suffered from problems, but it is the last one needing repair, according to an email from a district spokesman.

“There exists a condition where some Los Angeles Unified fields experienced infill issues where pellets melted together and made it not ready for play,” according to the statement. “We provided replacement materials that would prevent that from happening in the future. However, for all but Crenshaw’s football field, that turned out to be true. Our focus now is to expeditiously get the Crenshaw field repaired so it can be used again as quickly as possible.”

Crenshaw has already had the obstacle of not having enough players to get its football season started. The team is scheduled to play its first game on the road Thursday night at Roosevelt.