Movie night, hosted by the track and cross country teams, is one of the events that will help fundraise for trips since the district is no longer funding out-of-town trips. The two teams must raise almost $10,000 each and hoped to raise $2,000 from the movie night. 

To increase fundraising monies the team sold popcorn, drinks and pizza. Movie tickets cost $2.

“We struggle a lot (funding for) track and cross country team trips and equipment,” track captain Irvin Lopez said.

The two teams showed The Nightmare Before Christmas, Oct. 4 and faced several obstacles including a rainy forecast.

“We can refund or reschedule (if it rains),” cross country and track head coach Corina Marrufo said.

Initially Marrufo and coach Mark Stephenson ran into issues.

“I was told that district policy states that students are not allowed to eat on the (stadium) turf,” Marrufo said.

Marrufo and Stephenson had asked coach Perales and Principal Acuña to show the movie on the football field last year. When Perales left in the summer the Marrufo and Stephenson asked new football head coach Rudy Contreras if they could show the movie on the Jumbotron.

There are other reasons that the two teams wanted to have a movie night.

“It was [also] a way to bring the community together,” Stephenson said.

The team has been interested in a movie night for some time now.

“Some of the athletes wanted to do a movie night since last year, but it was toward the end of the year and all the [sport] banquets were going on,” Marrufo said. “So we ended up deciding to run it this year.”

The movie was selected through online voting. 

“It started with a bunch of movies and we broke it down to three movies that everybody (in track) voted for,’’ Stephenson said. 

There were movie restrictions though. 

“We went based off of the movies that were available for us to show because we had to get a license,” Marrufo said.