A green laser beam swept across the football field at Marin Catholic High School during a homecoming game last Friday, with at least one player saying it struck him on the field, as the Marin County Sheriff's Department opened an investigation into reports that someone fired the laser from a neighboring home. The incident happened as the Wildcats hosted the Windsor High School Jaguars at Don Ghilotti Motta Athletic Stadium in Kentfield, a game Marin Catholic won 27-26.
The laser strike landed in the middle of a years-long, bitter dispute between the Kentfield school and nearby homeowners over the stadium's LED light poles — a fight that includes a neighborhood group's lawsuit over the lighting project, which is pending before a state appeals court. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a Marin County deputy sheriff opened an inquiry and began taking witness statements at the game, a detail confirmed by Miguel Almaguer of the Marin County Sheriff's Department, who said the investigation remains ongoing.
Photographs shared with the Chronicle show a figure apparently aiming a green laser from a balcony across Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, though it is unclear from the images exactly what the laser was aimed at. Assistant football coach Ted Lindquist told the paper he saw the green laser hit the ground near his team's own 20- or 30-yard line in the second half, and that it stopped when play stopped, then appeared again. At least one player reported that the laser hit him directly on the field, Lindquist said.
Deputies Investigate as Laser Laws Carry Real Penalties
It remains unclear whether the laser incident is connected to the ongoing fight with neighbors over the stadium lights, the Chronicle reported. Still, Lindquist said the school is taking the matter seriously because of the safety risk it poses to players and spectators. Under California Penal Code § 417.25, intentionally aiming a laser pointer at another person in a way that causes reasonable fear of bodily harm is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in county jail, according to Shouse Law Group. A related statute, Penal Code § 417.27, makes it an infraction to direct a laser into a person's eyes or a moving vehicle with intent to harass, carrying fines up to $100.
Green lasers are highly visible and can cause eye symptoms, making them a concern at games played under the stadium's new night lighting.
A 27-Year Fight Over Light Poles Reaches the Court of Appeal
Marin Catholic has sought county approval for permanent athletic field lighting on its Kentfield campus since at least 1998, with past proposals repeatedly failing or being withdrawn amid community pushback, according to reporting on the dispute's history. The latest push began in May 2024, when the school applied to install four 80-foot LED light poles around its stadium off Sir Francis Drake Boulevard at Bon Air Road, arguing the lights would let teams share limited field space more safely and schedule later practices and games.
The Marin County Planning Commission rejected a staff finding that the project qualified for a CEQA exemption in October 2024, but the Marin County Board of Supervisors overturned that decision that December, clearing the way for installation. Under the permit the supervisors approved, Marin Catholic is limited to operating the lights no more than 135 calendar days a year, including no more than 10 varsity football games ending by 9:30 p.m., per county permit records. The lights went up in October 2025.
Neighborhood group Preserve Ross Valley sued over the project, and the legal challenge is pending before California's 1st District Court of Appeal, according to the Chronicle. Preserve Ross Valley has argued that the stadium sits beneath densely populated, terraced hillsides that create a natural amphitheater effect, concentrating light spill and amplifying crowd noise into nearby homes.
Neighbors and School Officials Clash in Court Filings
In court documents, Preserve Ross Valley member John Holzwarth argued the lighting project was illegally approved and should have required a full environmental impact report, while resident Barbara Salzman stated the 80-foot poles would alter the existing ambiance of Ross Valley. The Chronicle reported that it contacted Preserve Ross Valley and attorney Michael Graf, who had not responded as of publication.
School officials, meanwhile, point to tangible benefits from the lights. Marin Catholic Board of Regents member Chris Roeder said the lighting opened new opportunities over the previous year, including a new girls flag football team that he said would not exist without it. Marin Catholic athletes and visiting teams have reclaimed more than 1,200 hours of class time, the school says, because games and practices no longer have to pull students out of school to finish before dark. Roeder added that Friday night games bring Marin students and families together.
A Pattern Repeating Across the Bay Area
The conflict in Kentfield is not an isolated one. Bay Area schools have faced similar legal battles at roughly six other campuses, the Chronicle found, and similar CEQA challenges have disrupted or delayed stadium lighting projects at San Marin High School in Novato and at Carmel High School, according to court filings from a related case. At St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, neighbors won a 2024 appeal requiring a full environmental impact report for four 90-foot towers installed in 2021 at J.B. Murphy Field, with the St. Ignatius Neighborhood Association challenging that report's flaws and inconsistencies — including a dispute over whether the project allows up to 150 evenings of use per year, as the project description states, or 214 nights, as neighbors contend the report also references. Consultants are revising that report, which is expected to go before San Francisco's planning commission later this year for a certification vote.
The legal foundation for these fights traces back to a 2022 ruling by California's 1st District Court of Appeal in Saint Ignatius Neighborhood Association v. City and County of San Francisco, which found that high school stadium lighting projects are not categorically exempt from CEQA review, according to Dannis Woliver Kelley. The ruling provides guidance on CEQA review for high school stadium lighting projects.
Attorney Jennifer Hernandez has argued that this use of CEQA to block high school stadium lighting reflects a broader abuse of the environmental law, telling the Chronicle that LED retrofits should be encouraged because they cost less, use energy more efficiently and allow equal practice and game time for boys and girls. She pointed to Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination in education programs that receive federal funding and requiring schools to provide equal athletic opportunity to students of both sexes, noting that the law and the growing popularity of girls sports have driven demand for field time three or four times higher than in the past.
For now, the laser investigation and the revived lawsuit sit side by side as unresolved threads in a conflict that has simmered in Kentfield for nearly three decades. Marin Catholic's win over Windsor on homecoming night ended 27-26 on the scoreboard, but the fight over who controls the night sky above the field is far from over.
