POULSBO — Where do you draw the line?

Athletic fields throughout North Kitsap have been closed to “rest” following the conclusion of high school fall sports, but four NK soccer club teams still need places to practice for their upcoming appearances in the Washington State Youth Soccer Association State Cup.

And when the time comes in mid-January, those four teams will be expected to host home games — something that will require field space, which, as of now, is unavailable.

“The one reason we close down in November is because of all the rain, we usually have to go and replant, reseed, top dress and fill in holes virtually after every weekend of games,” said North Kitsap School District director of facility operations Dave Dumpert. “(It) allows them not so much to repair but mostly to keep from being further demolished.”

All 25 fields in North Kitsap, owned by the NKSD, are grass-seed. Even though most are sand-based with drainage systems in place, intense action during the wet winter months can be devastating.

“Other than lacrosse, soccer is probably the worst damaging to a field,” Dumpert said.

North Kitsap’s fall league select club soccer teams finished out the regular season with “home” games nearly 20 miles to the south in Bremerton on the sand fields at the Pendergast athletic center. The four teams, which earned berths to the State Cup, have since been using Hamilton Field – with the OK of the North Kitsap Pee-wees football league — for practice, but it is in no shape to host a State Cup contest.

“We’re not here with our hand out, we’re not looking to cause any ruckus, we just want to talk and compromise,” said North Kitsap Soccer Club select coordinator Ed Skelly, adding that he has seen little effort from the district to reach an agreement that would allow off-season field use by his teams.

According to an information provided by the NKSC, nearly 1,800 soccer practices and games combined are prohibited by the full-time field closure from November to April.

However, during the rest of the year, 8,110 NKSC practices and games combined have been played out on NKSD fields.

“I think 8,000 events (in addition to) Viking Cup is a pretty good amount of use,” Dumpert said, noting that he believes the district has maxed out usage on its fields.

The NK stadium field and Strawberry Field 1 are in the best shape of all the fields in the district, Dumpert said, and he intends to keep them as such.

But the NKSC believes that the best facilities are not being used effectively.

According to NKSC data, the stadium grass hosts 65 games and no practices per year — including 22 games doled out for NKSC’s annual Viking Cup. Strawberry 1 features 69 games — including 26 Viking Cup matches — and 50 practices, totaling 119 events a year, while the field at Wolfle Elementary school hosts 479 events a year — including 412 NKSC practices.

As the primary fields are off-limits, NKSC and user groups alike are forced onto other fields, creating congestion and damage to that grass, Skelly said.

“We limit the amount of usage of those two (stadium and Strawberry 1) because they are our prime fields,” Dumpert said. “The primary reason for having the fields is for school activities.”

However, the NKSC accounts for more than 40 percent of field use in the district, Dumpert said. And the kids being affected most by the nearly 50-percent-of-the-time field closures are those in the select club soccer leagues, of which many either are or will be feeding into the high school programs, Skelly said.

Of North Kitsap Soccer Club’s 1,775 total club participants, 1,623 — or 93 percent — of them are also a part of the NKSD, according to NKSC data.

“We look at ourselves as being there to serve the kids and the community,” Skelly said. “What we’re echoing is what our members are saying. The last thing we want to do is trash the fields, it doesn’t do us any good to overuse, we just want to see if a compromise can be reached.”