The turf at Greene County High School’s Tiger Stadium will look new this upcoming 2024-24 school year.
According to the April 25 edition of the Lake Oconee News, the Greene County Board of Education approved an estimation to replace the turf at a cost not to exceed $994,395, which came from ESPLOST funds.
Deluxe Athletics, a company from Cobb County, bid $844,395 to complete the resurfacing project. The project is now done and is ready for Greene County’s football team’s season opener against rival Putnam County on Aug. 16. The turf field is also used as a soccer pitch, a site for track meets, and other various events.
GCHS athletic director Chad Smith is excited the project took less than three months to complete.
“We are very thankful to our superintendent and the school board for approving our new turf field. It came out better than we could have imagined and a lot faster than we anticipated,” Smith said.
Smith highlighted a significant feature of the new field: the turf pellets will reduce the temperature on the playing surface. This new cooling technology will help keep Greene County’s athletes safe on the turf.
“Our new field has the new technology that reduces the field temperature. This will be beneficial while trying to combat the summer heat in Georgia and getting our athletes acclimated.” Smith explained. “Also, our old turf was approximately 12 years old. It was more of a carpet-based turf. The new turf has more realistic strands to represent better actual blades of grass, which should also help with the traction of athletes.”
The field turf at Tiger Stadium on the GCHS campus was initially installed in 2011. However, the average lifespan of a multi-use turf field is about 10 years, so the resurfacing project was needed.
According to Smith, Deluxe Athletics also repaired the drainage below the turf and re-coated the track surface.
The same company, Deluxe Athletic, originally installed the turf 13 years ago at Tiger Stadium. So, this new surface will be good for the foreseeable future, especially with the latest cooling technology on the turf.
“Our student-athletes at Greene County will benefit immensely from the latest technology in turf fields,” Smith said.