By Sam Boykin
With Oregon’s rainy climate, Jesuit High School, located in Portland, often had to contend with wet and muddy athletic fields. “By the middle of October the field we used for soccer and football was basically a mud pit,” said Mike Hughes, Jesuit High School’s athletic director. “During the early part of the year the baseball team would have to train in the parking lot or inside the gym because the ground was such a mess.”
And while school officials couldn’t do anything about the weather, they did decide to revamp the surface of their athletic fields in 1999. But rather than go with Astroturf, which was the norm at the time, they used a relatively new material called FieldTurf.
Today, the same fields that were once unfit for play several months out of the year are now used nearly every day by the football and soccer teams, as well as the school’s physical education classes, and even the local little league teams. Moreover, the school’s track team, which Hughes coaches, also conducts most of their practices on the FieldTurf surface.
“It’s increased the amount of time our sports teams can spend on the field training,” Hughes said. “Even if it’s raining, they’re not slipping or getting muddy. And it also helps prevent repetitive movement injuries like shin splints.”
And because FieldTurf’s synthetic system doesn’t require water, fertilizer, or need to be cut, Jesuit High School saves money on maintenance costs. “We were one of the first high schools in the country to use FieldTurf, and the decision has really paid off,” Hughes said.
Indeed, the Jesuit Crusaders recently won their second consecutive Oregon 6A Championship and for the 13th consecutive school year the Crusaders won the Oregon Athletic Coaches Association’s All-Sports Award, which recognizes the school with the most state tournament points across all sports. Such accomplishments caught the attention of Sports Illustrated, which named Jesuit as the top high school athletic program in the state for the 2006-2007 school year.
While it’s debatable just how much of Jesuit’s success can be attributed to FieldTurf, it does seem that the school was certainly onto something when it installed the new surface nine years ago. Playing on an artificial surface has become a key component in the NFL, NCAA, the CFL, CIS, and MLB, for such teams as the Toronto Blue Jays, Minnesota Twins & Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and FieldTurf has been the one to help these teams reach that level of performance with the use of an artificial surface. FieldTurf is also popular with colleges, soccer clubs, and municipalities.
Given all this, it’s no surprise FieldTurf continues to be the top choice among championship schools, including Wheaton-Warrenville South High School in Illinois, where the Tigers recently won the Illinois Class 8A State Championship for the fifth time.
Athletic Director Bob Quinn said that the school installed FieldTurf in 2003 as part of a community bond issue designed to expand and enhance the school’s academic, performing arts, and athletic facilities.
Similar to Jesuit High School in Oregon, Wheaton had several natural grass fields that couldn’t withstand much wear and tear.
In fact, the soccer team had to practice off-campus because the field couldn’t take the pounding of both the soccer and football teams.
All that changed with FieldTurf. “We took a facility that we used four to five times in the fall for football, and about five to six times in the spring for girl’s soccer, and turned it into a piece of land that we now use six days a week from morning to night,” Quinn said.
Today, both the football and soccer teams use the field as well as the school’s marching band and physical education classes.
“Like many high schools we’re landlocked,” Quinn said. “There was no space to build or turn grass into fields. So I see FieldTurf as some of the cheapest land you can buy. It’s definitely some of the best money we’ve spent.”
