North Rock Creek is gearing up for its first home football game on new turf.
The installation of artificial turf on the football field will be finished before the game on Friday, with the goalposts being put up on Friday morning, said Superintendent Blake Moody. The work is being carried out by United Turf and Track.
“It looks beautiful. They’re more than halfway done now,” he said.
The superintendent said United Turf has been ahead of schedule, working on weekends, late nights and early mornings to meet the first game deadline. The contract was signed a bit late, which meant they were going to need to move efficiently to get it done.
Moody said that work on the subsurface, compaction, gravel and drainage has been underway for the last couple of months, though installation of the actual turf started last week on Thursday.
“It kind of gives you a sense of pride when you drive up to the field. It cleans up the campus. It’s a showpiece. People will, the whole community will be excited about the first game Friday night on the new turf,” he said. “Because, I mean, really without the Pott County sales tax, we would not be able to do turf like this.
“And we’re gonna be able to turf all three fields. So we’re thankful for them.”
NRC Athletic Director Evan Smith echoed the sentiment, saying the school has been pretty excited, especially as they watched the turf being laid.
“It’s kind of a cool thing to have, you know, for our football team. But not only that, just for our school, because we’ll be able to utilize it for other activities, too. For PE and things like that. For our younger students. So we’re excited about it. It’s going to be good. No more rainouts,” he said.
Smith said they went with the safest product possible with the best padding underneath for the fields.
“We also went with some of the infill that’s put inside the grass fibers that help it be more like a natural grass. So everything we did that we had kind of safety in mind,” he said.
The next phase of the project is to install artificial turf on the baseball and softball fields. Moody said work will begin on those in November and the plan is to carry it out simultaneously, with both fields completed by February -- before slowpitch and baseball season start.