Stone Memorial High School has begun replacing the turf on its football field to address player safety concerns.
Athletic Director Nathan Brown said the current surface will be replaced with a mixture of bermuda, fescue, and ryegrass. Brown said the new surface will total some $100,000.
“I think if you talk to any football coach that has visited Stone Memorial High School, especially over the past five or six years since I’ve been in this position, we generally get complaints regarding our field, the safety of it being too hard, a lot of bare spots, it’s uneven, and just generally we get those complaints,” Brown said.
Brown said two years ago, the school started looking into what was causing the deterioration of the field. Brown said that after a study was completed, drainage issues were the main culprit.
“Those exposed the other issues that were going on with the field as well, and so we have to fix the base level of that drainage stuff first, which we’ve been able to tackle over the past couple of years,” Brown said.
Brown said the new playing surface will hopefully reduce the number of injuries and also improve the quality of play.
“Kids aren’t gonna trip and fall,” Brown said. “They are gonna be able to run their routes. They are gonna be able to juke and cut without, you know, tripping over uneven playing surfaces and dips in the field.”
Brown said the field should be ready for play before the high school’s first home game in August.
