Fall Track & Field 2025 at Roosevelt Middle School
San Diego Unified School District offers a free athletic program to all middle schools. Roosevelt student-athletes compete with other schools and are recognized for their achievements via Roo-Tube announcements. The program gives students opportunities for team competition and personal growth throughout the season.
Started in 2022, the district athletic league now involves over 5,700 student-athletes. Current sports are soccer, basketball, track & field, volleyball, flag football, wrestling, and cheer. Possible future additions include baseball, softball, cross country, and badminton.
FALL SPORTS: Basketball and Track & Field.
WINTER SPORTS: Soccer and Volleyball.
SPRING SPORTS: Flag Football, Wrestling, and Cheer.
This fall there are two teams at Roosevelt: basketball and track. Student-athletes practice during the week and compete on Saturdays at various SDUSD high schools.
Fall, winter, and spring sport seasons are brief. Basketball and track tryouts started August 25, 2025; competitions ran from September 13 to October 11. Playoffs, semi-finals, and finals are on October 18 and 25 for qualifying athletes.
This fall, I attended every track meet and was excited to see student athletes succeed. They learned to run races on a full-size track and managed event logistics independently, from checking in to warming up and competing. With Coach Tais Marinho-Gomez’s support, these athletes grew into a cohesive team. Coach T is new to coaching middle school track, but she brings years of experience as a former horizontal jump specialist. She also compete in high jump, sprints, hurdles, won league and division titles, and participated in CA state championships. UCSD recruited her, where she set the school’s second longest women’s triple jump mark and earned a conference win. Despite a chronic knee injury, Coach T gained coaching experience while observing practices from the sidelines.
Last year, Coach T moved out of her career corporate career and when she learned of the coaching position at Roosevelt she jumped at the opportunity.
I asked Coach T about what she’s learned from her Roosevelt student athletes. Here is what she said:
“[seeing] the students recognize their own improvement, seeing how much more confident they are, and witnessing them starting to think like Track and Field athletes! For example, before the first meet of the season [they] were all scared of the 400 and the complaints about running it were non-stop. Now I have athletes coming to me asking if they can run the 400, telling me how they can feel their improvement and even working on their race strategy and mental game. I know the confidence they have built in the short 6-7 weeks we spent together will stick with them throughout their years, both in T&F and in life.”
To learn more about the history and impact of the SDUSD Middle School Athletics program, please read the article in Voice of San Diego here: uhsd.org/RooVOSD.
Readers may donate to support athletics at Roosevelt by donating to the Roosevelt Middle School Foundation (aka RooFriends), a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. All donations are taxdeductible to the full extent allowed by law. Tax ID# 38-3933254. Please mail a check to RooFriends to 3366 Park Blvd, San Diego, CA 92103 or directly to the school contacting Mr. Lonnie Jones at 619-725-7440 or ljones3@sandi.net.