JEFFERSON TWP — In this artificial turf era of high school football, getting a natural grass field ready for a season takes ... well, natural effort.

Knoch, which is ready to kick off its new season tonight at home against Franklin Regional, is the only school above Class AA in Butler County that still plays football on grass. Derry Area is the only other school in the Knights' conference that does so.

“It's inevitable we'll have a turf field someday,” longtime South Butler School District field maintenance worker Dan Cypher said. “Change happens. But for now, we're happy dealing with what we've got.”

Cypher has been working on Knoch's football field for 15 years. Tim Wallace has been at it for 12 years, Steve Antoszyk for seven.

“Those guys know what they're doing,” said Chris Reiser, South Butler's director of buildings and grounds. “We have 50 to 60 events take place on that field every season. They keep that field going.”

Just getting it ready in the first place is a rather complex task.

Simply lining the grid of the field — marking off the actual playing field, end zones and hash marks — is a four-hour job for two people.

After that, getting the numbers on the field is another two-hour job for two people. The numbers were scheduled to be stenciled onto the field Thursday for tonight's game.

“It's a full day,” Reiser said. “And the field gets lined once a week because there are so many games up there.”

Knoch varsity football head coach Mike King says the football field is only a small part of what this trio does for athletics in the district.

“They're always mixing paint for something,” he said. “We have a middle school soccer field, our varsity soccer field, the band practice field ... They take care of all of that. In the spring, they line the field for lacrosse, do the shot put for track and field, do the softball field ... they are behind-the-scenes people we couldn't do without.

“And if I wander up to our (football) field at 8 a.m. the day of a JV game and feel like the lines are too light, I'll ask them to slap another coat of paint on and they do it with no problem. They're great guys to work with.”

Knoch's varsity, junior varsity, freshman and junior high football teams play their home games at Knoch Stadium, as does the Saxonburg Spartan youth program. Knoch's boys and girls soccer teams each play two home games per year in the stadium.

King uses a “moisture meter” to determine how saturated the field gets after a period of rain.

“It's an instrument we can stick in the ground and it gives us a reading of just how saturated the field is,” King said. “I don't use it often, only after a heavy stretch of rain or so, and the meter has to be used when the field is at its most saturated point.”

“If it's not playable, we wouldn't use it,” Reiser said. “We monitor the moisture in there.”

The field cannot be lined when the grass is wet, as the lines would run off. So the maintenance crew is at the mercy of the morning dew and weather forecast.

“We usually get one or two hours' notice before we run up there and do it,” Cypher said of lining the field. “The conditions have to be right.”

And when it rains often, the grass grows quicker.

“It may grow so high that you can't see the lines anymore,” King said. “Then we line it again.”

During a dry week, the field is watered two or three times by an automated system. The playing surface is reseeded two or three times during the season, then again in the spring.

Fertilizer is repeatedly placed in the grass and the field gets aerated three times a year.

“You have to keep that new seed watered. If Mother Nature doesn't do it, we do it ourselves,” Cypher said. “A lot goes into getting a grass field ready. There's an expense involved. We spend plenty of hours up there.”

Cypher added that the roots of the grass are so long that “even when the field gets muddy and appears torn up, the grass is still there.

“It's just that the mud is laying on top of it,” he said.

The next rain washes the mud off the field and the playing surface becomes green again. If there's no rain, the crew will roll the field and take the mud off manually.

“Despite six games a week on that field, it stays in pretty good shape,” Reiser said. “It's a source of pride with those guys.”