We've seen an increase in turf fields at the high school level in Texas especially the Houston area due to raining all of the time and unpredictable weather. Our stadium got turf a couple of years ago and are adding a jumbotron scoreboard right now. Growing up, I never seen these kinds of fields except at some colleges and pro fields. Are ya'll seeing more turf where ya'll are at?
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Not at the HS level. Everything is bigger in Texas.
Every high school baseball field from Maryland to Maine should be turf to handle violative spring weather. Few are.
Gotta love 375 in dead center!
Yup.
Is that HS or college? Ya'll big timing! LOL
TXdad2019 posted:Is that HS or college? Ya'll big timing! LOL
LOL, none of them are my son's HS!
But definitely seeing more turf -- that middle one is a field that just opened this year.
Incredible! I will say I am not a fan of turf mounds but those fields are just unreal.
We haven't had a rain out game since the turf was installed. A couple of years ago there were only a couple of fields that were turf and our baseball team was 4 rounds deep in the playoffs. We had to travel like 3 1/2 hours to find a turf field due to the weather. After that, the district said we will have turf next year.
We did get an extra large bag of zip ties from the district this year, at some point the wind screen will be just zip ties we used to hold it up.
a small sample size in the Dallas area
At the local HS the baseball field is natural grass while the football field is turf. So far it is the only turf football field in the region.
The JuCo my son played at it installed a turf infield two years after he left.
We have one that I am aware of at a high school level, at least in Central Iowa. There may be more, but I don't know of any.
We have several turf football fields. But only a few actual HS turf field I know of. 1 at a relatively new school and one at a small private school.
What we really need, is a complex of turf HS sized fields in our area. You could get the high schools on them in the early season, and then the 14U and HS travel teams in the late spring and summer.
A lot of turf football fields around here. Only a few turf baseball fields, but they are becoming more common.
You'd think the Pacific NW would have exclusively turf fields with all the rain up here, but those that have turf are often just turf infield, so the grassy outfield causes the rainouts due to swamp-like conditions at many HS fields. Sometimes if your field rains out, you'll switch to an away game if the opponent has turf, just to get the games in. March madness weather up here!
In Central Ohio, we have one turf field at the HS Level. It belongs to an all male, Catholic school. It is a combined, football / Baseball facility. Part of the football field is the outfield. Turf was the same one both. You had to have slick fielding outfielders. If a ball skipped past an outfielder, it will travel for quite a bit. Ground balls did not slow much when hitting the turf. And god help any fielder if there is any english on a hit ball.
Definately some home field advantage.
I've always wondered about the cost. We're in north Texas and have seen some incredible turf fields. It almost seems commonplace at this point, and is no longer a shock.
Does anyone know what it costs a school to put down turf and how long it is expected to last?
I believe that depending on how much sub-grade work and drainage work is needed etc., you can figure a budgetary number somewhere between $400,00-$700,000 depending on size of field and what type turf selected including installation. If you throw in nice stands/stadium, batting cages, bullpens, new lights, scoreboard you can easily get in the 1-1.5 million range pretty quickly. They are purported to be 10 years +- but that also depends on how much use there is by other sports/activities (soccer, lacrosse, drill team, marching band, tournaments, football practices...)
