Los Gatos and Saratoga will play a football game Friday night at Helm Field. It's at Los Gatos High School, but Saratoga will be the home team—and for a very good reason ... Helm Field is the Saratoga football team's home, too.
Los Gatos fans may not like it very much, but since both schools are part of the Los GatosSaratoga Joint Union High School District, the field is shared by both schools.
So Saratoga will be on the home side of the field on Friday night and the Saratoga fans will be sitting in the home bleachers. There's a good chance that Saratoga will not have enough fans to fill those home side bleachers. And there's an equally good chance that Los Gatos will have more fans than the visitors side bleachers at Helm Field will comfortably hold.
Still, as much as Los Gatos may not like it, that's the way it is—there's only one lighted football field in the district.
There's no chance that the residents in the surrounding neighborhood will ever allow lights at Benny Pierce Field on the Saratoga High School campus—those at West Valley College know the hopelessness of trying to get the residents of the city to go along with that.
So that means that Saratoga's official home is Helm Field, and every other year the Falcons will be the home team when they take on the Wildcats.
That every other year comes this Friday night. So Los Gatos fans, if the visitors side is full, better join the Saratoga fans on the home side to find a seat—there should be plenty.
Parade deadline near
The deadline is less than two weeks away for groups to enter the Los Gatos Children's Christmas and Holiday Parade. And according to officials at the Los GatosSaratoga Community Department of Education and Recreation, the number of entries is down from previous years.
The parade is a source of great pride for the town, and has a long history of providing an entertaining day for children and adults alike.
It would be a shame to see the event become less spectacular than it has been in the past just for lack of participation.
Numbers will no doubt improve as the Nov. 14 deadline gets closer. We all have a tendency to put off such things until the deadline draws near.
But we encourage groups to consider putting together an entry so that the 47th parade will be as successful as the 46 that have previously been held—and the deadline for doing that is only 10 days away.
The Los Gatos Weekly-Times will be in the parade line-up again this year, and we challenge others to join us. Of course, we too are in that multitude of parade participants who have yet to send in entry forms.
We'll take care of that this week—and we hope others will too.
