On an unseasonably sun-splashed afternoon in Golden Gate Park, 12-year-old Angelee Yusi of Denman Middle School took a pass at midfield, cut outside and drilled a soccer goal.

That’s right: They played soccer on the new Beach Chalet synthetic fields Wednesday.

Angelee was 6 years old when the city first proposed replacing the natural grass at the Beach Chalet soccer fields with artificial turf. The divisive, unpleasant battle over the fields has taken that long.

“Honestly,” said Recreation and Park Department Director Phil Ginsburg, “I think I may cry.”

Wednesday’s debut of the fields was a moment for the city, for the organizers, and most of all for the middle-school players who were the first to sprint, kick and yelp with enthusiasm. Until recently, the city’s 21 middle schools and 35 teams had so few fields that boys and girls had to play coed games.

The transformation is incredible, and not just for the fields.

Po Bronson, the local author and president of the board of San Francisco Youth Soccer, remembers the days when the area between the Beach Chalet restaurant and the battered grass fields was a no-go zone.

“It was horrible,” he said. “I’d bring my daughter here, and there were (hypodermic) needles on the ground.”

Now not only are there sparkling new fields, but also the overgrown brush and landscaping has been pruned back so you can actually watch the ocean waves from the pitch.

“It used to be desolation,” said Don Collins, commissioner of athletics for the San Francisco school district. “Now it is a destination.”

It’s difficult to say when opposition to the synthetic turf went from quirky and civic-minded to cranky and mean-spirited. It’s enough to say that it happened. Amid talk about the interruption of migratory bird routes and scary toxic substances in the artificial turf, one thing remained clear. These opposition groups weren’t formed to warn of the possible dangers of cancer-causing particles in the turf for children everywhere.

Is there a debate to be had over the possible health hazards of this kind of artificial turf? Absolutely. And that question is being raised and studied by scientists and experts all over the world.

That’s not what this was about. This was an attempt by some angry neighborhood activists to stop artificial fields on this site. Opponents didn’t make a peep when fields like this were installed in other parts of the city — 14 synthetic fields in seven city parks since 2006 — or in thousands of locations all over the world.

In fact, they happily proposed that the fields be moved to other neighborhoods. Because that was always the goal — not in our neighborhood.

Early on, it seemed only fair to cut them some slack. This is, after all, the democratic process. And San Francisco loves its process. But by summer the project had been approved by the planning commission, the Board of Supervisors, the city’s Board of Appeals (twice) and the California Coastal Commission. There was a public hearing and public comment. A voluminous environmental impact report, running over 1,700 pages, was prepared, approved by the Board of Supervisors and upheld in court.

Anthony Rossmann, an environmental attorney for 45 years and seasoned veteran of land-use issues, thinks the process might actually have been destructive. (Full disclosure: He’s also a longtime soccer referee.)

“These cases discredit the environmental movement so much,” he said. “They build up resentment and give fodder to people in the Legislature who want to weaken the laws.”

In 2014, the question about whether to install synthetic turf at the Beach Chalet soccer fields went to the ballot box with competing measures. Voters chose the artificial turf by a 10-point margin. The day after the election, in an in-your-face-move by the city, bulldozers arrived to start tearing up the grass.

Finally, inevitably, the issue went to the courts. A three-judge appeals panel this fall heard representatives from the local chapter of the Sierra Club, who claimed that the EIR didn’t adequately consider the health risks. Frankly, even the justices seemed a bit exasperated. At one point during the oral argument, Rossmann says, two of the justices asked the opponents “if they weren’t misrepresenting the record.”

“I’ve never had anyone say that to me in 45 years,” said Rossmann, who followed the case carefully. “And it didn’t reflect well on anyone.”

The 54-page decision by the appeals court to uphold a previous court ruling in favor of the city notes that the dispute produced an eye-rolling 52,000 pages of legal documentation. It is an exhaustive list of case law, competing environmental studies and disagreements with previous legal rulings, and the justices went through the challenges point by painstaking point.

And in every case they came up with the same answer: “We are unpersuaded.”

Surely this will be the end of this long, difficult slog, although there have been threats from opponents of taking this to the Supreme Court. The true believers will tell you that their efforts have been for the good of the city, the health of the players and the preservation of Golden Gate Park.

We are unpersuaded.

Chuck Nevius is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail: cnevius@sfchronicle.com