The case for a new field, made last week…

Last week, our soccer and football teams ran into field conditions on our high school field that were sufficiently bad that our last home soccer game was moved because the field was deemed unplayable, & our football game Friday was played in a mudbath.

After going and watching the soccer girls on Thursday at Oak Harbor High’s artificial turf field, I found myself thinking about ways to do things better. I know we face daunting financial problems in our school district, and I would be the last one to want to support a new field before we balance the budget to support our good schools’ core curricula.

In the meantime, I’d like to re-post some remarks I made in 2004, as FHHS headed for the State Final Four in boys’ soccer:

Field of dreams: OK, one last thing about outside stuff with round balls and banana-shaped balls.

In case you didn’t notice, we have a problem with our athletic fields here on the island. For the number of folks who use ’em, we simply don’t have enough, and we overuse the ones we have…

I remember in the football playoffs in November 1998 when our linemen couldn’t go into a three point stance because their arms would sink into the goo of our field up past their wrist. I remember the high school girls trying unsuccessfully to pass in the mud when I coached ’em those years…the field is not an all-weather, all-season deal, even though we use it like one.

The artificial turf field at Mount Vernon in the pouring rain, in the 2004 playoffs...

It was pretty cool to see this field last night (right) at Mount Vernon High School. Yesterday morning it started raining, and it rained all day. I’m not making this up – I checked. I was watching the games in Burlington all day, and the whole game last night…the rain didn’t let up. I walked the field to take these photos for you, and it was raining. But the field itself was very playable, and the boys who worked so hard to get to this level of play actually had a field that let them USE the skills that make for high level ball.

I don’t know the finances of it – I’m pretty sure an artificial turf field is pretty expensive, and I’ve heard million-dollar price tags thrown around – but what if we spend the money we pay each year anyway to pay off a loan for a field we CAN use, a low-maintenance (maybe no-maintenance) field that could be used all year regardless of the weather?

Where there’s a will there’s a way. There sure is a need…

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