Dear Editor,

On Tuesday, April 1, 2008, I went to SOSU to watch my daughter play a soccer game. This was a scheduled District game against Harrah that was suppose to start at 5:30 p.m.

Now our (Durant) high school teams are playing on this community-built field because of a tax increase to make renovations to Paul Laird field, a new “community” gym with a walking track and the Multi-Sports Complex. Please correct me if I am wrong, but that was my understanding of the last tax increase, besides the one that just passed to build a new DHS!

So, my point is that due to the SOSU football team going over into our (DHS soccer) time the game was delayed by more than a half hour! So, the girls varsity team did not get a full warm-up time and pre-game preparation, in return the opposing team does not as well. Not to mention that the opposing team is then later getting home and the boys varsity teams are now behind schedule! Now, I have to say that the only time of any of my three children’s career at DHS that I have felt that they truly had their “own” field was when my daughter played high school softball at Billy Miller Park. Granted, yes, it was a city park that they were allowed to play on, but a school coach that made the field better than most college fields I have seen maintained. He took many hours and manpower to make the girls feel that was their field!

My point is that this kind of incident at SOSU is to what makes a community not want to contribute the steps to making DHS better, bigger, stronger! In my eyes, we, the tax paying citizens, are mislead into the real events that occur!

So, does the Durant High School have the pleasure of utilizing the community renovated “football” field at SOSU? Was it just an innocent oversight of the SOSU football coach that saw the uniformed teams there ready to place the goal on the field and warm up then play the scheduled game?

This is the Oklahoma high school soccer season, and I am pretty sure that football starts in August, right? So all I am asking is that SOSU and the community give these DHS students some respect to enjoy playing their games on the community tax renovated field! Thank you for your time.

Cherry Jackson

A tax paying citizen and supporter to our community