March 10 Special Meeting Summary: Save Girls Field Hockey

1TVPAC Team

The Background

At the regularly scheduled TVUSD school board meeting on February 25, 2025, Board President Melinda Anderson suggested scheduling a separate meeting specifically to address the cancellation of Girls’ Field Hockey. The February board meeting had a packed agenda, and Dr. Anderson has been working on streamlining meeting processes and reducing the length of board meetings since taking over as President in December 2024. 

The cancellation of Girls’ Field Hockey as a TVUSD sport the week prior to the February meeting meant the board members had received dozens of emails and social media backlash, communicating the disappointment felt by not just those involved directly in the sport, but many stakeholders in the TVUSD community.

Dr. Anderson and other board members stated a desire to take the time to hear all public comments on such an important topic. Dr. Anderson allowed three students and three parents (one each from TVHS, CHS, and GOHS) to speak at the February meeting and stated she and Dr. Woods would meet with all stakeholders at a separate meeting in March to hear other speakers. As a result, the February meeting ended at 10:20 p.m., not after 1:00 a.m., like the January meeting.

However, the separate meeting on Monday, March 10 turned into a special board meeting because all five TVUSD trustees wanted to be included. As a special board meeting, it was live-streamed and saved on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmQRS927Kkc).

The two-hour meeting involved an hour and 40 minutes of public comments (many of them  student comments that were articulate and moving) and then 20 minutes of board trustees speaking and finally voting unanimously to keep Girls’ Field Hockey.

Sounds great, right? Almost like an episode of a feel-good Disney+ teenager television show. 

The Reality

The five school board members walked into the meeting having already decided to vote yes to save the sport. They indicated support at the February meeting and then many of them reiterated support on social media and in email correspondence with community members. Since they’d already decided, did we need to foot the bill and spend time on this exercise? 

Consider the student groups at GOHS who couldn’t use their Performing Arts Center that night, the cost of setting up the equipment to broadcast the meeting, the cost of security personnel who checked bags and waved their wands over every person who entered, all the district staff who carved out an extra few hours of their day to attend, and the trustees themselves — who have many other important topics to address but instead spent two hours on this one topic.

While the impressive public comments showed the strong community support for keeping girls’ field hockey — and let district staff know how poorly the decision had been handled — the meeting primarily served as a feel-good performance for board trustees. 

Trustees Play the Hero

For example, Trustee Komrosky told the meeting, “you don’t have to fight for your sport anymore. I'm going to fight for you and pull that burden off of you.” However, he as an individual board member has no power to force decisions. He also demanded, “I want the immediate reinstatement of Coach Jim Dale at Temecula Valley High School and Brian Carter at Chaparral High School tomorrow, not next week, tomorrow.”

Individual board members cannot demand anything; the board works as a body.

Komrosky also said, “from what I know, it was $26,000 to keep these sports alive in a year, I think we can do that and I want that to happen.”

We don’t know whether that figure is accurate, but perhaps the money would have been available if Komrosky and Wiersma had not incurred hundreds of thousands in unnecessary costs over the last two years — especially attorneys’ fees.

In contrast, Trustee Barham showed that he understands the trustees’ role and the financial issues when he stated, “it's for the superintendent and our business support services people to figure all of this out, but we are behind you … we're making this motion to bring this back as it has been done historically.” 

The Process 

Clearly the process the district used to make the decision needs to be revisited. Since this decision was made for all three high schools, on the same timeline and communicated to the public at the same time, it was a coordinated, district-wide decision.

But why abandon a successful sports program? The decision to cut a TVUSD sport, any sport, probably came after months of discussion, research, and weighing the pros and cons, and was likely a financial decision. 

Without knowing exactly what led to it, we can speculate based on prior experience and knowledge of sports at TVUSD and funding/budgetary concerns. There are only so many facilities (fields, workout areas, locker rooms), and TVUSD high schools struggle to support the existing sports. When all sports are evaluated, the popularity (number of students/people involved), and the cost to sustain them are the most important factors.

If it was determined that the existing number of sports couldn’t be maintained without significant cost to upgrade or expand facilities (for example, it costs millions of dollars to create one additional field for practice), then the high schools and district staff had to evaluate which sports to cut to allow the rest to continue. Given the budgetary constraints for the next few years, investing in new fields, equipment, and facilities isn’t feasible.

But girls’ field hockey has continued for years, and the decision to replace it with girls’ flag football — which presumably would require similar field space — seems odd. 

What we would have liked to see as a community, especially after two years of misinformation and antagonism from school board trustees, is full transparency and communication about this decision. The district could have let the community know during the fact-finding stage about the need to cut a sport and the issues involved—finances, facilities, coaching staff, whatever—and explored alternatives with those involved in the sport at risk. Instead of an after-the-decision uproar and a special board meeting, we would hope for more input earlier, and serious attempts to resolve the issues.

It’s easy for trustees to sympathize publicly with students and parents and swoop in to “save” the day by passing a motion. But the real work of figuring out how to keep field hockey wasn’t even mentioned in this meeting. All except one of our sitting trustees are either new to the job or clearly don’t understand their job after two years on the board. We hope they will all learn better ways to respond to problems before they escalate, and find solutions that work for everyone. As Barham noted, “To the gentleman who asked for accountability, we are learning from our processes in all kinds of areas throughout the district.” 

A Final Note

Although we believe the district and the board could have handled the situation better, one wonderful outcome was the opportunity for a group of students to advocate for themselves, speak at a public forum to adults in a position of power, and see the community rally around and support them.

Those young women and other supporters who sent emails, spoke publicly, spread the word, researched how other communities sustain their programs, and more, deserve a round of applause. What we saw on March 10th, despite its flaws, was a life lesson for the students of our district.