The Seaside Raiders football team has been in Seaside for, well, a really long time. Not even the team’s coaches are sure just how long, although some are willing to bet that the Pee Wee, co-ed football squad has been scoring touchdowns and smothering offenses in Seaside for more than 30 years.

In light of that long local legacy, the approaching fall season may be one of the Raiders’ gloomier ones. For the second year in a row, players, parents and coaches are facing the prospect of playing most of their home games away from home.

That’s right: the Seaside Raiders are a homeless football team.

For decades, the Seaside Raiders of the Monterey Bay Youth Football League (for ages 9 to 14 years) have played their home games at Seaside High School’s football field. It’s the only field in Seaside that’s regulation size and has bleachers and goalposts in place.

Additionally, the Raiders team has served as a sort of farm organization for the high school’s perennially powerful Spartan varsity football squad. Many high school championship teams—including last year’s—have been stocked with players cranked out by the Raiders system.

Because of a controversial administrative rule at Seaside High School, however, three of the Raiders’ four home games scheduled for the coming fall will be played elsewhere. According to Jeff Uchida, assistant principal at Seaside High, the school’s policy prohibits more than one athletic game per week on the same field.

“In prior years, when the fields were used by the [high school] and community, by the time football was completed the field was an absolute mess,” Uchida wrote in an e-mail to Raider staff on March 9. “Please check to see if your schedule can be switched.”

Raider Coach Daniel Washington says the nine-team league’s schedule is already set and can’t be altered. And so for three dates (Sept. 10, Sept. 17 and Nov. 5), the Raiders will have to find a home field outside of Seaside.

“We’re kind of weighing our options now,” Danielson says. “But there aren’t really any other facilities in Seaside other than the high school.”

Jasmine Parker, the Raiders’ cheerleading coach, is frustrated. Two weeks ago, she took her complaints to the City Council.

“We’re willing to pay $1,000 per game to use their field,” Parker says. “It would be nice for Seaside High to help us out.”

Seaside Mayor Ralph Rubio and Councilman Darryl Choates have promised the Raiders staff that they’d apply pressure at the high school—which has received funds from the City for other sports programs.