The Clarke Community school district school board has been working toward getting synthetic turf on the football field since the approval of soccer as a sport at Clarke Community High School.
The board believes a synthetic turf field will withstand the traffic put on it from the school events better than the traditional grass. The grass field requires watering, painting and crowning every few years to help with drainage off the field.
“Maintaining the football field is really expensive,” said Superintendent Steve Seid.
The crowning of the field will need to be done again this year. Instead of paying to do that again, the board has decided that synthetic turf would be a better investment and benefit the school for a much longer period of time.
The current football field is an outdoor classroom for PE classes, where football games are played, where the marching band performs at halftime of football games and soon will be hosting soccer practices and games.
“Our field cannot withstand another sport on it the way it is,” said Seid. “It [turf] is certainly an expense, but we just see that the expense is outweighed by the need for football, band and now soccer.”
Synthetic turf on the field would open up the possibility of Clarke hosting a marching band competition because the field would be better equipped to handle the foot traffic.
Activities Director Tracy Johnson has been put in charge of looking into grants for the project. The board has narrowed it down to three companies. For a project of this caliber, by law they must take bids, and have an engineer on staff to oversee everything. Some of the companies have engineers already in their employment while others do not, which would require an engineer to be hired on top of the company. A soil sample of the field has already been taken. Once a recommendation comes to the board regarding which company to go with, the project should be underway this spring.
To maintain the synthetic turf, the field must be brushed periodically.
“We won’t have to worry about mud or damaging the turf. It’ll all be set for years and years and years to come,” said Seid. “We just see that over the long term, it’s really going to be a benefit for the district and the community.”