Jackson schools consider artificial turf field
School officials in Jackson County will be crossing their fingers over the next few weeks, hoping to get a low number back from a study looking at the cost of putting artificial turf on the football field of Smoky Mountain High School.
“If that project’s going to exceed the money I have in hand, I will immediately cancel this project,” pledged Superintendent Mike Murray.
County government foots the bill for school facilities, and money’s going to be tight in Jackson County over the next few years. But the school system recently landed a $200,000 grant from the NFL to go toward the artificial turf project, a competitive award given to only 17 schools in the country.
That’s why Murray’s eager to get a bead on what the entire project might cost and, if it turns out to be within his $715,000 budget — that amount includes the $200,000 grant — move ahead as soon as possible. Last month, county commissioners approved Murray’s request to get an engineering study done to come up with a price tag for the project. The school system now has a $58,000 contract with Waynesville-based Civil Design Concepts, set to finish up by the end of January.
But why, when the school system is also facing needs such as aging roofs and textbook shortages, should something like the artificial turf project get priority?
According to Murray, it has a lot to do with opportunity. Cost-savings opportunity due to the grant, but also an opportunity to open the field up to more groups of kids. Right now, the football field at Smoky Mountain High is the only full-size football field in the school system. There are a lot of people who want to use it, but scheduling field use is a dicey game when it comes to grass fields, which can get torn up from rain and overuse. That’s what happened this fall, when a playoff soccer game slated to be held in Jackson County following a period of rain had to be held in Transylvania instead. The field was in too bad of shape to accommodate the event.
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“There are a lot of sports out there, and we have quite a few individuals that would like to be able to utilize a football field,” Murray said. “We feel we can increase from just one group using it on Friday night.”
Artificial fields can be used over and over again without fear of tearing up the ground. If the field were installed, said the district’s athletic director Cindi Simmons, use could include seven football teams, six cheerleading squads, four soccer teams, two marching bands, physical education classes and Special Olympics competitions.
Another plus, Murray said, would be the lack of upkeep. Expensive as it is, once the field went in, there wouldn’t be much maintenance cost involved for the ten-plus years of its life. Over the past two years, the school system has shelled out $37,000 for field service and repairs. The figure does not include the cost of painting lines, purchasing machinery or paying someone to mow the field.
The majority of commissioners seemed favorable to the idea when Murray approached them in December.
“That football field out there is used for football, peewee soccer, JV football, varsity football, marching band,” said Commissioner Boyce Dietz, a Jackson County native who’s both played and coached football for the school system. “It’s a difficult thing to use one field for all those things no matter what the weather is. With turf you can practice on it, you can play on it, you can do all those things on it.”
“When we discussed this at a work session earlier this year, I said, ‘Whatever Boyce Dietz says,” Commissioner Vicki Greene said last month before moving to approve Murray’s request.
Support for the artificial turf grass concept is not unanimous, however. Denny Wood, a longtime youth football coach and retired N.C. State Highway Patrol Officer in Sylva, has been one of its most vocal opponents.
“For the kids in the summer, it’s absolutely terrible,” said Wood, who’s taken his teams to play games on fields that have artificial turf. The plastic grass gets quite hot, he said, and the crumb rubber comes off in little black pellets that attach themselves all over the kids’ bodies.
“When we played them (Cherokee), we had three go down from injuries. Cherokee had six sitting out from that game that were hurt by it,” Wood said of the artificial turf at Cherokee. “It’s a higher injury because when you’re playing on grass it’s going to give and let out. When you’re playing on turf, it’s an immediate stop.”
Wood’s main objection to artificial turf, however, has to do with its purported link to cancer, which some say stems from the crumb rubber — basically, ground-up car tires — that form the base. Type “artificial turf” into Google, and the third option that pops up is “artificial turf and cancer.” In November, ESPN aired an investigative report exploring the link, turning up a plethora of anecdotal evidence supporting a correlation but not reaching a definitive conclusion. However, neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the Environmental Protection Agency has classified crumb rubber as a hazardous substance.
“After reading all this stuff about kids getting lymphoma and Hodgkin’s lymphoma, I don’t think it’s worth the risk,” Wood said. “I don’t.”
Murray said he’s taken the objection seriously and read through the research but doesn’t believe the concern is warranted. However, he said, he will ask the engineer to look at how using cork, rather than crumb rubber, in the field would affect the price.
“I personally think when you look at the research it does not signify a significant risk for our students,” Murray said.
Letters of support the school system gathered to accompany its grant application included one from Carolina West Sports Medicine, something Murray doesn’t believe would have materialized if doctors there were concerned about the health risks of artificial turf. The school system has received much more positive feedback than it has negative, Murray said.
Besides, he said, it’s not like growing a grass field is an organic enterprise.
“I’ve had different people look at it and say, ‘Do you realize how much chemicals they put on Bermuda grass to keep it green?’” Murray told commissioners. “I think we can argue it either way.”
At the end of the day, said Commission Chairman Brian McMahan, the final decision will likely come down to price. Will the engineering study reveal the project to be within the school system’s budget, or not?
“All that debate, while I think it’s got some relevance, the final decision will be made based on what the price tag is for the project,” he said.
