If you build it, they will come.
“Imagine what this would do for kids in Waynesboro,” Waynesboro High School football coach Steve Isaacs tells me, going into detail on his vision for a new synthetic-turf athletic field at the city high school.
“Kids would grow up wanting to play on that field,” Isaacs said. “Football, soccer, whatever. It would be something that kids across the area would talk about. It would put Waynesboro on the map.”
More school systems are going the turf-field route, including just over the mountain from us in Albemarle County, where an anonymous private donor pledged the seed money toward the installation of turf fields at the three county high schools.
Monticello High School opened its synthetic-turf field this summer after completing a $225,000 school fundraising campaign. The private donor kicked in $325,000 toward the installation, and the county contributed $75,000 toward the project.
“I wish I could have another one,” Monticello athletics director Fitzgerald Barnes answered when I asked him his initial thoughts on how the field is working out for the school.
Barnes laid out for me a detailed schedule for the field – from use by the local little-league football program to JV and varsity football and field hockey. “And in the spring we have soccer and lacrosse,” Barnes said.
“We get a lot of use out of it. We can practice at night, just turn the lights on. We don’t have to worry about wearing it out,” Barnes said.
Albemarle and Western Albemarle are working to complete their own fundraising work in time to have fields ready for practice and play in the spring, or at the latest in advance of the Fall 2010 sports season.
Isaacs, who came to Waynesboro after a successful stint as the head football coach at Western Albemarle, thinks the turf-field route is the way for WHS to go.
“You don’t have to worry about wear-and-tear,” said Isaacs, who has wear-and-tear foremost in his mind with the schedule of four consecutive home football games in the month of October.
“I just hope we have a field left to play on the last two weeks,” Isaacs said.
The field could also provide a return on investment in the form of providing a venue to host state high-school football and soccer playoff games and matches and travel-team tournaments, Isaacs said.
“You’re going to save money on maintenance alone,” Isaacs said, and I confirmed with Barnes that Monticello is expecting about a $25,000 annual cost savings in maintenance with its new turf field.
“So you’re going to save money, and you can make money with playoff games and tournaments. Over time the field pays for itself,” Isaacs said.
But there’s the sticking point to the idea. It pays for itself, but the part where it pays for itself comes on the back end. And in the meantime, the front-end money isn’t quite what it is over in Albemarle with a private donor stepping forward with half the money off the top.
“I think sometimes it is hard to dream when the economy is so poor,” Waynesboro school superintendent Robin Crowder e-mailed me.
A synthetic-turf field isn’t even on the school system’s wish list, according to Crowder, listing as the top priorities for improvements to athletics facilities the addition of concession facilities at the soccer/track complex and improvements to the concessions/press box at Kate Collins Field.
Former School Board chairman Bob Gunther, who now heads up the city Parks and Recreation Commission, remembers there having been a brief discussion regarding the installation of a turf field at WHS several years ago, but that’s about it.
“If there is a need determined, then all the involved folks would need to gather for further discussion,” Gunther told me by e-mail.
Further discussion is what Isaacs hopes to get going.
“We can make this happen. It’s just about getting people to the table to start making it happen,” Isaacs said.
– Story by Chris Graham
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