PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) – Student athletes at Grant High School (GHS) will play another season without a game at their home field, dubbed the Grant Bowl, because it is not equipped with stadium lights.

During the day, football, soccer and cross-country athletes can practice on the turf field at GHS in northeast Portland. But once the sun goes down, these students have to go elsewhere.

“They can’t even run a full track day here because it gets dark in spring,” said Lucy Kapranos, a senior at GHS and captain of the girls’ soccer team. “They were running races in the dark and they couldn’t see who was finishing in what places. It was so weird.”

In July, the City of Portland approved a request to install stadium lights at the Grant Bowl. But Portland Public Schools (PPS) told FOX 12 that because of the permitting process, the lights won’t go in until December. This means the football and soccer teams will go yet another season without lights.

Until the lights are installed, student athletes will continue to travel to other fields for home games. Oftentimes, this means leaving class early to account for the commute.

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FOX 12 spoke to Miro Wesener, Grant Girls Soccer Manager and member of the Grant Bowl Community Coalition, who has been advocating for stadium lights for years. Wesener’s daughter, Brooke, is a captain of the soccer team.

“They’re put in a position to choose between school and sports,” Wesener said.

And Brooke has done the math. For home games alone, she said she misses 11 hours of class time each year.

“We obviously know we’re students before we’re athletes and we prioritize our schoolwork, but it makes it very difficult to balance the two when we have to miss 11 hours,” Wesener said. “And then with away games, [there’s] even more travel time.”

Despite the district’s promise of a Dec. 1 installation, student athletes said they’re not feeling optimistic.

“It feels like it’s going to keep getting bumped and bumped and bumped,” Kapranos said. “I guess my expectations have just gone downhill. I am just waiting to be disappointed again in December.”

Kapranos and Wesener are both seniors, which means they will never get to play a home game under the lights. But that’s not stopping them from advocating for underclassmen and the rest of the GHS community.

“Right now, we don’t have that, but if we could build that, build that community, I feel like that would bring the whole school closer,” Wesener said.

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