A select number of sports at Westside High School are given the chance to have personal sports lockers during their activity’s season. That leaves some students to wonder why their sport doesn’t receive a locker.

Tennis is just one example of an athletic team that does not have lockers during their season. Social Studies Instructor Amy Studts is a coach for boys and girls tennis and has seen how not having a locker to store equipment can sometimes be a problem for athletes.

“It could be useful for the athletes to have [a locker] to store their items,” Studts said. “I’m not sure how big the lockers are and if they fit tennis bags. During the JV boys season, I had athletes store tennis bags near my desk.”

Lockers can be used in a number of ways for athletes including storing equipment, or even personal items throughout the week.

“Tennis bags can get quite large,” Studts said. “If the lockers were big enough, then it would be helpful for the kids.

Some athletes without sports lockers use school-issued lockers or their cars for their sports equipment. Senior and varsity tennis player Joshua Rosenblatt is a said it varied from year to year.

“Freshman [and] sophomore year I kept it in my locker during the school day and took it home at night. Senior year I kept it in my car,” Rosenblatt said.

Assistant Principal and Athletic Director Thomas Kerkman said that receiving a locker is a matter of requesting one from the athletic department.

“Most kids have all of their stuff in their cars or bring it up to the office, it just depends [on] how much stuff they have because they don’t like to go all the way to the locker room,” Kerkman said. “We have plenty of lockers down there so if they want one, they just have to get one from a coach.”

Another factor that can cause a lack of locker space is teams overlapping seasons during the year. 

“The hard part with our locker room situation is that if [a team] qualifies for state tournaments, it is usually during the start of the next season, so sometimes we have a lot of conflicts with teams getting lockers while others are finishing up their sports,” Kerkman said.