8/24/2011
Synthetic grass
The new trend of synthetic services for football fields has enabled schools to use the multi-purpose fields year around.
The life expectancy of these fields is about 10 years.
The field at Salinas High Stadium lasted a decade before it was redone over the summer. But there are other synthetic fields in the county that are six to eight years old that are starting to feel more like AstroTurf.
With school budgets shrinking, where will the funds be to replace these fields?
2 comments:
Good question!
I'm still a fan of natural grass fields, especially when home-field advantage is at the utmost of importance for certain games. When I played at Carmel a few years ago I felt that we had a big advantage because of the natural field. We practiced on it every day, and knew every little imperfection in it like the back of our hands. In tight games, that was a big advantage in my opinion. At a great venue such as The Pit, where the larger (in most cases) home crowd is in such close proximity to the field, I think having artificial turf probably levels the playing field (pun intended) and takes a lot away from the home-field advantage.
I think this subject might make for a pretty interesting pre-season article for the Herald. You could gather a lot of different opinions and have some good interviews with coaches and players from around the county on the subject.
Although artificial turf is a bit more expensive than other surfacing options, the costs that will be saved when using artificial turf is far outweighs the initial expense.
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