Turf has come a long way since 1968
In the last 50 years many improvements have been made in the world of sports. The quality of protective equipment and the detection and treatment of injuries have all seen significant upgrades.
The surfaces on which athletes practice and compete also have changed in many cases, even at the high school level.
The first scholastic venue in Butler County to have an artificial surface installed was Karns City High School's football field in 2000.
It provided almost every Gremlin player — and their opponents — their first opportunity to play on an artificial surface.
“It wasn't the original AstroTurf (like that played on at Three Rivers Stadium), but field turf. When you get tackled on it, it feels like real grass,” said Ed Conto, former Karns City football coach. “I remember the thing that we had to tell all teams coming to play us that year was that players couldn't wear the regular metal spikes. They had to wear plastic ones instead.
“A big benefit for us was that late in the season, our practice field was always a mess and after we got the turf, we would practice on it. Even if there was heavy rain or even snow, it wouldn't affect it.”
It wasn't just the football team that reaped immediate benefits from the new surface.
“The soccer teams had been playing their home games in East Brady,” Conto said. “We were able to move those games back to the school in front of more fans.”
Since Karns City's turf installation, Seneca Valley, Mars, Butler, Slippery Rock, Freeport, Grove City and Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic have all followed suit with their respective football fields.
As for Diehl Stadium, as Karns City's venue is now called, the original turf was replaced a few years ago. It remains an important asset to the Karns City School District.
“If the football team and one of the soccer teams needs to use it at the same time, they share and each takes half the field,” Conto said. “Everybody gets along.”
<b>Leading the way</b>No school district in Butler County, or the region for that matter, has taken the lead on playing surface improvements like Seneca Valley.The district had turf installed at Raider Stadium (now NexTier Stadium) in 2005. That affected the football, soccer and lacrosse teams at the school. However, it was not until after Heather Lewis became athletic director in 2012 that Seneca Valley took facility improvement to a new level.Lewis is a former women's field hockey coach at Bucknell University, leading the Bison for 16 seasons.“In field hockey, our world was turf,” she said. “Because of that, I became very familiar with different types of playing surfaces.“Here in Pennsylvania, the weather is so unpredictable and the amount of work involved in maintaining grass fields is huge. You can't lose sight of the number of teams that we sponsor. In soccer alone, we have eight teams in the fall between varsity, junior varsity and middle school.”With that in mind, the district undertook a “master facility plan,” as Lewis described it. It would lead to three more venues with artificial turf — the baseball field, softball field and a lacrosse/soccer field.The upgrades were in the works for about a year before installation. The baseball field was finished in October 2015, the softball field a month later and the lacrosse/soccer field was ready for use in the late spring of 2016.The installation of turf has given much-needed flexibility to a district with more than 2,000 students in ninth to 12th grade alone.“My first three years here, our baseball and softball teams were never outside on the first day of spring practice,” Lewis said. “Instead, they would be in the gym. Now, right off the bat, they are outside.“For the fall season, our soccer teams have, at times, practiced on the turf at the baseball field. Our (physical education) classes have made use of it as well. We wanted to find the best way to maximize the fields' usage and value.”The result has been striking when it comes to the number of home games the varsity softball and baseball teams have had to postpone.“Since the turf was put down, we've had just one game that was called off and that was only because the rain was heavy at game time (4 p.m.).”The combined cost for all three of Seneca Valley's newest fields was about $3.5 million. Each field has a life span of about 10 years before the turf will need to be replaced.“There was no fundraising involved,” Lewis said. “The district has money set aside for facility improvement. We're blessed with a school board that understands the vision and the importance of giving student athletes the opportunity to maximize their potential.”<b>Kelly Automotive Park</b>Many school districts do not have the resources to install one or multiple artificial playing surfaces. That is why having a venue like Kelly Automotive Park, centrally located in the city of Butler, is so valuable.The site formerly contained the old Pullman Park, which opened in 1934 and played host to minor league, high school, American Legion and Eagle County baseball games during its 70 years.But by the middle of the last decade, the natural grass field and grandstands were in dire need of renovation. Following a $5 million project, and three years of not being used, Pullman Park reopened in 2008.Along with serving as the home to the Prospect League's Butler BlueSox, the site also attracted many high school baseball games thanks to its turf infield, but it was in 2011 that the site started to become a true marvel.That was the year that a synthetic batter's box was installed under the direction of Dess Schnur, who until 2013 was the park's director of stadium and field operations.“No other venue that I know of had a turf batter's box at that time,” Schnur said. “It was all experimental, but the dirt from the home plate area was contaminating the (artificial) turf around it and it became a maintenance nightmare. We needed to find an alternative.”The trial proved a success and the next year, a synthetic pitcher's mound was added.“The batter's box and mound converted Pullman into a field that can host games 24/7,” Schnur said.In 2014, the park's naming rights were sold to Kelly Automotive. The venue's popularity continues to rise.High school baseball teams that currently play most, if not all, of their home games at the park include Butler, Knoch, Karns City, Moniteau and Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic. Many other schools, most of them outside of Butler County, have scheduled practices and/or part of their home slate at the park, which has also hosted some high school softball games.The number of teams using the venue proves it is well worth the fee shouldered by the designated home team.“Because of where our high school field sits and how the water drains, we can't even practice on it until mid-April and that's only if the weather is good,” said Ross Martin, veteran Moniteau baseball coach. “Having a place like (Kelly Automotive Park) is critical for us so that we don't get a backlog of postponed games.“For the players, there is a prestige factor,” he added. “They get to play games on a minor league-quality ballfield and I think it improves the quality of our team. It plays pretty consistent for everyone.”
<b>A better brand of play</b>As Martin alluded to, artificial playing surfaces do not just allow games to be played despite the weather, they help the athletes decide things on the scoreboard as opposed to Mother Nature having a say.George Williams took over as Seneca Valley's boys soccer coach in 1995. Until his team began playing on the synthetic turf at the football stadium in 2005, his players battled opponents in conditions less than optimal on many a night.“(The grass football field) was well-manicured and at the start of the season it was in decent shape,” he said. “But with the number of events that needed to be played on it, it would be pretty chewed up two or three weeks into the season.“Playing on turf has affected the speed, but also the flow of the game,” Williams added. “Players can be a lot more affective with dribbling the ball and stringing passes together. We now get more predictable bounces and rolls of the ball.”In sports in which players are handling the ball most of the time, turf has had an even bigger impact.“It's a lot better now for quarterbacks, getting the snap and throwing,” said Terry Dillner, former head and assistant football coach at Mars. “When we played on grass, we'd always have a rotation of four or five balls that we'd use during a game. But in the rain, by the second half the balls were in pretty bad shape and handling them got to be tough.”The mud football game has become a thing of the past at many high schools, which may not sit well with old-school gridiron fans. But Conto believes the players should be the attraction and turf helps keep the attention on them.“Friday night football is still Friday night football,” he said.
