SCHOOL SPORTS FIELDS GAIN SOFTER TURF:
By Terry Carter
Houston Chronicle Correspondent
July 11, 2002
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"The fields we have are built on clay and have been worn out over time. Our field is like concrete. Each high school is having one field done now." Coach Bill Lane Taylor High School
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Many high school athletes have practiced for years on punishing clay fields in the Katy Independent School District, and, in some cases, they are paying the price.
But now the district is removing on one field at each high school the hard clay base and replacing it with a more forgiving topsoil and grass more accommodating to high, constant use.
Although delays are possible, the $500,000 project should be completed before football season begins in mid-August, according to school district officials. Durrett Services Inc., vehicles and subcontractors are improving competition fields at Taylor and Cinco Ranch and practice fields at Katy and Mayde Creek.
Taylor head football coach Bill Lane described as cement-like his school's competition field for subvarsity football games and varsity soccer contests. Grass stubbornly refuses to grow on the compacted clay soil and increased injuries prompted local high school officials to request field work.
Field conditions vary at each of the district's four high schools, according to district coaches. Some fields are uneven while others are unable to grow grass, which softens the falls of athletes.
"The fields we have are built on clay and have been worn out over time. Our field is like concrete," Lane said. "Each high school is having one field done now. Taylor and Cinco Ranch chose the competition fields because they are the worst. The fields see traffic before, during and after school nearly every day of the year, district athletic director Bill Bundy said.
"The grass is simply not growing there. These compacted fields have more traffic than most people think. We have five football teams and four to six soccer teams practicing, playing on each campus. Then maybe 10 teams of people with feet providing after-school traffic like Pop Warner," Bundy said.
Pop Warner is a youth football league named after the late Stanford University head football coach Glenn Scobie "Pop" Warner, who stressed the value of education and encouraged youth participation in sports to become a well-rounded person.
"It's been an 18-month process to arrive at what each field should be constructed of," Bundy added.
Mayde Creek head football coach Joe Sheffy said the plan is to scrape the old clay off the field, add 8 inches of topsoil and then a more resilient grass by August.
Sheffy, Lane and Katy head football coach, Mike Johnston agreed Katy athletes have encountered injuries in their workouts on the grass surfaces.
"I've never seen any injuries because of it here at Taylor, but I've heard Mayde Creek and Katy complain about it," Lane said.
Johnston detailed numerous "heart-wrenching injuries" on his high school campus since 1997 during practices and even routine activities. An injury to a player's anterior cruciate ligament or knee occurred "on a dropped pass," he said.
"We've all had athletes who have been injured that probably shouldn't have. In (August) 1999, I lost two of my starting defensive tackles within 20 minutes of each other due to broken ankles," Johnston said. "They had to have them pinned and the whole shooting match. One came back in the sixth game, the other by the 10th game.
"It's not fair to the kids. Our fields here are not as hard as some schools. We've got better topsoil, I think, but it's just uneven and needs to be turned over and regraded. When I came here in 1980, we had beautiful fields, but they've had a lot of wear and tear. And this is a fast-growing district. The fields are now in a disappointing condition and have flat out not been safe the last four years."
Sheffy also has lost athletes because of injury but did not lay the blame solely on the fields at Mayde Creek High School. He did mention several players, including returning all-district safety, Jeremy Curry, who suffered knee injuries or broken bones on the rugged grass field.
"It's hard enough to win when you have all of your best players out there. But when you lose them, it's tough," Sheffy said.
The artificial turf at Rhodes Stadium helped motivate the Taylor Mustangs soccer teams to move their home games to their campus several years ago.
"Soccer really needs to be played on grass fields, and we didn't really practice at Rhodes, so it didn't help us," said Taylor soccer coach Darryl Metcalfe.
Playing conditions at Taylor also weren't the best, because nothing would grow in the middle of the field, he said.
"We kept people off of it after the last football game. We fertilized it and aerated it, and it came a long way. but it was all dirt by the last game--something really needed to be done. This year was the worst it's been," Metcalfe said.
After talking to field maintenance professionals in various districts in the area, including Cy-Fair, Fort Bend and Alief, Bundy said he turned to the experts at Texas A&M University to help devise a system to work in Katy.
"I talked to the man in charge of fields at A&M during a two to three hour conversation. We came up with systems appropriate for KISD," Bundy said. These fields have been almost brutalized by the constant use and have had no chance to spring back."
[Please note that this effort was just a few years after Astroturf had been installed on the Rhodes stadium field, and a few years before Superintendent Frailey came along and dug up these newly redone high school fields and put down 5+ million dollars worth of Astroturf on the practice fields under discussion here. MM]