The grass is gone and FieldTurf is going in at King’s High School’s Woolsey Stadium.
Crews started digging up the grass field last week.
“We’re excited about it,” King’s superintendent Eric Rasmussen said. “It’s a significant addition to our facility.”
King’s is in the final stages of raising the $1.5 million needed to pay for the synthetic turf, new coating for the track and other upgrades to the stadium, Rasmussen said.
The bulk of the money is coming from King’s parents as well as money set aside in the school’s budget, Rasmussen said.
“The school is playing a key part in this as is our parent community,” Rasmussen said. “We’re appreciative of the support from our donors. This is going to be such a great improvement to an already nice facility.”
King’s hopes the field will be ready for play by Oct. 4 for a girls varsity soccer game and an Oct. 5 varsity football game. That’s the scenario for Plan A, weather permitting. The actual completion date might be later, Rasmussen said.
“We’re pushing the envelope in terms of schedule, ” he said. “We feel really good about it and believe we’re going to have good weather and be able to play part of our fall season on FieldTurf.”
The football team has one home game and the girls soccer team has two home games in September that will have to be played at different sites, such as Shoreline Stadium. At least one and perhaps more home football games might move to Saturdays there.
With increased use of the field from girls soccer in the fall and boys soccer in the spring, for quality and safety reasons King’s decided FieldTurf was the way to go, Rasmussen said. King’s was lucky to avoid a lot of rain in September last fall, he said, but that might not always be the case.
“When you have that much activity on the field and you get the early rain it makes it a challenge,” he said.
Still the grounds crew at King’s “did a great job” maintaining the field and “from a natural grass standpoint it was a great field,” Rasmussen said.
The FieldTurf being installed is of the Duraspine variety and is guaranteed to last for up to 10 years, Rasmussen said. Shoreline Stadium has Duraspine turf and it’s also being installed on Shorecrest High School’s football/soccer field right now. The life expectancy of FieldTurf fields here in the Seattle area is still unknown since fields such as the Husky Stadium FieldTurf surface, which was installed in 2000, have yet to be replaced.
Workers will excavate about a foot of dirt, build a drainage system and put down several inches of crushed rock before laying down the turf, which is made up of rubber pebbles, sand and artificial grass. An irrigation system will keep the rubber and sand moist in warm weather.
D.A. Hogan, a Seattle design firm, did the landscape architecture for the project. Premier Field Development of Snohomish is doing the installation.
The field at Woolsey, which gets heavy use especially in the fall and spring, has attracted outside events in the past and Rasmussen hopes that will continue to increase with the improvements.
The American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, the Meet of Champions for high school track standouts and a masters decathlon meet have all been held in the last year at the stadium, which is tucked away in a sunken bowl below the school.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
