Turf Project Underway At Wawasee High SchoolSYRACUSE – Work is on schedule, or pretty close to it, for the synthetic turf being installed at Wawasee High School’s Warrior Field.
According to Athletic Director Cory Schutz, the work should be completed in time for the beginning of fall practices.
“The rain we had last week slowed them down a little bit, but they worked some over the weekend and now I think they’re pretty much right on track,” he said. “This week they’re working on the drainage system and laying down some limestone.
“Things are moving along.”
The contractor for the estimated $850,000 project is The Motz Group, the same company that installed turf in Goshen’s and Warsaw’s stadiums last summer. Plymouth is also having synthetic turf installed at the Rock Pile this summer, meaning half of the eight Northern Lakes Conference schools will have turf going into the 2017 season.
Schutz said he hadn’t heard any discussion of the remaining schools making the switch from grass, but such talk wouldn’t surprise him.
“The other schools haven’t talked about it at all, to my knowledge, but I wouldn’t be surprised if conversations begin, because people are going to look at everybody else and see it,” Schutz said. “But to my knowledge there’s not been any conversations at other schools yet.”
Schutz said the field will be used by both the boys and girls soccer teams and the marching band, as well as the football team. All the teams will get a chance to practice on the new surface several times before performing before the public.
“Everybody will get practice time on it; it won’t be a daily thing for the football or either of the soccer teams. I’d worked up a sample practice and game schedule to present to the board. We could use that, but I want to get the coaches’ input on when they need the field,” Schutz said.
“The sample schedule includes all three athletic teams and the band as well. We’ll get everybody out there. There may be short practices or just a part of practice where they’re out there an hour or so and go back to grass for the rest of their practice.”
The new field will allow full-length junior varsity soccer games. Before the turf many of the games were ended at halftime due to darkness.
The soccer facility on the north side of the parking lot will remain in place, giving the programs greater flexibility in practices and, in a pinch, the rescheduling of games if need be.
“The two practice fields we have now aren’t full-size, regulation fields, so we’ll have a better practice facility. We’ll also keep the bleachers over there in case we get in a pinch and need the extra fields for tournaments or to cover rainouts if lightning becomes a problem,” Schutz said. “It’ll be nice to have that flexibility and options for certain situations.”
With the old grass surface, Schutz said the football field was used around six hours a week (it wasn’t used for practice). That should more than double now with the new surface.
“We plan to get lots of use out if it. (Physical Education) classes will be on it, and we won’t have to worry when the band gets its practices on the field.
“It’s cleaner, so it should be better on our uniforms with less wear and tear. As a former spring coach, I would have loved to have a field like this on days when the diamonds were too wet or too muddy. Now baseball and softball teams can use it for fielding ground balls and fly balls. We also plan to have a middle school football game and middle school soccer games on the field, giving parents who might be working during those games a chance to see their kids play under the lights.
“It’s going to open up a lot of opportunities for a lot of our programs and the community as a whole.”
