FLOOR SHOW

SYLMAR —  The building is called Social Hall, but it hasn’t been a friendly environment for the Sylmar High girls’ volleyball team.

While awaiting completion of a new floor in the school’s gym, the Spartans are practicing in an auditorium with low ceilings and a vinyl floor that might function well in a kitchen, but not as a volleyball court.

Without their gym since Sept. 5, the Spartans (11-3) have not played a home match and are using Poly’s gym to play host to City Section 3-A Division playoff games.

Winning in foreign gyms hasn’t been a problem for Sylmar but practice has been as the players compete against more than each other.

Social Hall is used for cheerleading practice, aerobics and dance classes. Volleyball practice is interrupted every day by campus police, who make patrols in a golf cart that is parked in the southeast corner of the auditorium.

If the second-seeded Spartans win their quarterfinal playoff match Thursday against seventh-seeded Eagle Rock, they won’t be able to practice Friday in the auditorium--it will be decorated for the Homecoming dance that night.

Earlier this semester, the team conflicted with drama students who used the stage to sing and work on skits.

Enough, said Coach Bob Thomson.

“I’m going, ‘Hey, I can’t even talk to my team,’ ” he said. “I asked [the students] to practice outside for 10 minutes or to hold it down so I could at least talk to my players. It was unbelievable. It was one thing after another.”

Social Hall hasn’t been the same since the volleyball team took over.

Several acoustic tiles have been knocked off the wall by errant serves or hitting attempts. In some places, brick wall is exposed.

Ironically, the hardened auditorium floor, which is dirty as a result of daily foot traffic, may be the reason for an early playoff exit by the Spartans.

“You can’t throw yourself and dive like on a normal gym floor,” middle blocker Kassy Jimenez said. “You have to be careful, you have to take precautions.”

Said Thomson: “It shows in our defense that we don’t dive a lot in practice. But I can’t ask them to dive on that floor.”

Setter Sandra Smiley, the 1996 3-A co-player of the year, encounters another hazard--a 20-foot ceiling.

If she sets a ball a little high to the outside hitters, it hits the ceiling. During one 90-second span of a Sylmar scrimmage, the ball struck the ceiling four times.

Thomson estimated the ball hits the ceiling at least 100 times per practice.

When he learned the Spartans would be without a gym, Thomson asked to use the gym at neighboring Olive Vista Junior High, but was told the junior high drill team and karate classes needed the gym after school.

“We weren’t asking for pie in the sky,” Thomson said. “We just wanted to use it for a couple days a week for six or seven weeks. I thought it would be a done deal. We get over 90% of our kids from there. I was pretty shocked.”

Thomson, who also serves as a guidance counselor and is in his 24th year at the school, welcomes the new Maplewood floor in the gym, which is replacing a synthetic floor. But the timing, he said, is a little skewed.

His team isn’t the only one without a home court. The Sylmar basketball teams are practicing on outdoor courts until the floor is completed in December.

“I hate to see any team impacted,” Thomson said. “Why didn’t they do it during the summer when they had the opportunity? When they lost their window of opportunity, they should have waited until June.”

The amazing part is the Spartans’ success this season. Despite starting only two seniors, Sylmar, which has won two of the past three 3-A titles, finished third in the Valley Pac-8 Conference and was selected the No. 2 seed in the 3-A playoffs.

One positive of being without a gym is it taught the Spartans to be fearless.

“It teaches us how to be tougher,” Jimenez said. “We don’t really have fans. We cheer for ourselves. We have to depend on each other.

“It’s sort of, I guess you could say, depressing, especially since we’re the second seed and we should have home court [advantage] . . . but we don’t have a home court.”

Said Smiley: “It’s sad. I want my school to see us play at home. I think we deserve that.”