By Dave Morrison
CHARMCO – Greenbrier West will be the first Coalfield Conference Class A team to have an artificial turf field when the school’s $2 project is complete next month.
Greenbrier and Wyoming County are both undergoing new turf projects this summer, bringing the total to 11 Coalfield schools with turf playing fields.
Nobody need tell Greenbrier West Athletic Director Jared Robertson, a member of a state champion football team at West, how big the new turf playing surface is going to be for the school.
It’s the dawning of a new day., as work is continuing on the nearly $2 million resurfacing project. It is scheduled to wrap Aug. 7.
“I really think that this is the final piece of the puzzle in a way,” Robertson said. “If you take all the Class A stadiums across the state you can put ours up against any of them. We’re really proud of it.”
The county board took on the project with Greenbrier East also getting a new turf job on its field, its current carpet showing wear and tear.
“Our county really took care of both schools, they are getting theirs replaced and we are getting a nice new facility here,” Robertson said. “I think it has brought a lot of excitement to the community. I’m sure a lot of vehicles have pulled up the hill here to peek at what’s going on. We are excited for it. We aren’t going to miss the days November mowing the grass and painting lines and trying to patch up mud spots and trying to keep playoff games alive here. It’s going to be nice to know that we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
There are no discernable drawbacks, the merits of turf are well known, ranging from easy upkeep, to practicing in any weather, to having hashmarks on a field. And the turf can be used for multiple sports.
The days of mowing the grass, painting the field, fertilizing, and liming the field in the offseason and worse – patching late season divots and holes to get the field ready – are a thing of the past. So is worrying about a playoff game moved after earning home field advantage.
Consider last year’s 35-0 shutout of South Harrison.
“It was a total mud pit,” Robertson said. “If we had been fortunate enough to have a home game the next week we would have moved to Greenbrier East or someplace else. It’s just hard, in this part of the state especially, to keep a field in good condition. We had a nice crown and as good a grass field as there is in the area. I’m not going to miss the fertilizing and the liming you have to do in the off season.
It’s a win all the way down to game day preparation.
“People think you paint the field and it stay there,” Robertson said. “To paint all those numbers and hashmarks takes a lot of time so a lot of the time you are practicing without that stuff. Your spacing matters in the passing game. To know you can talk to your players about lining up on tip of the numbers or splitting the numbers and the hash, all those things that we were guessing about with paint before are now going to always be there now. All those things will matter. Balls aren’t going to be muddy. That will all be positive.”
The playoff victory last November was a final snapshot opportunity for the field as it was, with jars being filled with sod, and pictures being snapped for the-way-it-was scrapbooks
Robertson said the players’ reaction to the new turf might make for Kodak moments.
“I’m excited to see our players get out here on it and look around and think what a special day it is for our school,” Robertson said.
A new track will also be installed and completion on that will come in mid-September.
Robertson thinks the project will be complete by the Aug. 7 date and if it is delayed there is a plan for preseason practice, which begins a week before,
“If we have to be more than a week, we’ve had a good relationship with the middle school and there is a chance we could have some practices and The Greenbrier Sports Performance Center. They’ve been really good to us.”
Robertson carefully weighed the question of whether there were any negatives to turf.
“Well, we haven’t been the fastest team in the world from time to time, and some people think that turf gives speed more of an advantage,” he said. “Maybe there will be sometimes that somebody will come in here with a bunch of fast kids that we can’t handle, and we will look around and say, ‘Man, maybe we should have them in the mud tonight.’”
Robertson stopped and laughed because he knew he had more to add.
“There’s been a lot of times where we’ve had games that we lost here in the mud that we felt if there were better conditions we would have won,” Robertson said. “You never know, it’s game to game and all about matchups. We’re excited to have it and really looking forward to seeing how it is when it is finished.”
Greenbrier West will play on its new turf when it opens the season hosting Pendleton County Aug. 25 at 7 p.m.