Oceanside High’s girls water polo team made a unique field trip to the San Diego Hall of Champions and the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park.
03-17-05
By Tom Shanahan, San Diego Hall of Champions
The school field trip, once a staple of American education, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. School district budget cuts make it difficult for principals to allocate money for a bus and time for the students out of the classroom.
But teachers and students can still come up with creative means when seeking approval for a field trip. Oceanside High girls water polo Chandra Prather and her athletes found a way to make the journey down the coast for a day-long visit on March 17 to the San Diego Hall of Champions Sports Museum and the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park.
First, the athletes, dressed in their school color of green on St. Patrick’s Day, rode the Coaster from Oceanside to San Diego’s downtown Santa Fe Station. Then they walked to a city bus stop and boarded bus No. 7 for a ride to Balboa Park and the Hall of Champions in Pan American Plaza.
Prather did the research on how the girls would travel and then approached Oceanside principal Kimo Marquardt for approval.
“I was surprised he approved it,” Prather said. “But he said, ‘Let’s reward the girls for building a program.’ It was a great educational experience for the girls.”
Oceanside’s girls water program grew to 35 athletes in 2004-05 in Prather’s first year as a teacher and coach at the school. She inherited a program that had only 12 girls on the team a year earlier.
Oceanside senior Annette Boston, who is bound for the Coast Guard Academy with ambitions of becoming a pilot, said the athletes enjoyed exploring the Hall of Champions. At the high school awards kiosks, they looked up the names of past All-CIF honorees on the computer screens.
“A lot of the girls said they wanted to make that team next year,” Boston said.
They also appreciated the display that recognizes Junior Seau, the Oceanside High alumnus who was an All-Pro linebacker with the Chargers.
“It was interesting to see someone we know from our school honored like that,” Boston said. “He’s come to our school many times.”
Many of the Oceanside athletes are surfers, and they also appreciated the surfing exhibit at the Hall of Champions. At the Natural History Museum, they were interested in studying the ocean exhibits.
Posted on April 10, 2005 by San Diego Hall of Champions
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