gregor,
Just found your thread ... good on you! Here's an interesting article on the new playing surface for Lane stadium.
Kind regards,
greg s
VTCC '74
roanoke.com
Saturday, July 07, 2001
Football field will be carved up in less than a month Could home-field advantage go with them?
For Hokies, grass truly is greener
The portable field is made on 4,600 "trays" that are porous, climate controlled and weigh half a ton each.
By KEVIN MILLER
The Roanoke Times
BLACKSBURG - At the far end of a tarmac at the Virginia Tech airport, the grass grows in a 400-foot swath that's just too perfect for its surroundings.
First off, there's not a shade of brown in this sea of grass. Its freshly clipped blades look more akin to a golf course than to the weedy, overgrown patches on both sides of the tarmac. And its flat surface is elevated 1 foot above normal topsoil, making it a verdant tabletop amid the weeds.
As its appearance attests, this is no normal field. This is the newest facade of Hokie football: a manicured, heated, practically rainproof, and, perhaps most unusual, portable field that can be picked up and put back together like a jigsaw puzzle. This fall, Tech will be the first college in the nation to play on such a field.
You'd never know it standing atop the grass, but the field is, quite literally, a massive patchwork of potted plants. Only these "pots" measure roughly 4 feet by 4 feet and weigh about 1,100 pounds each.
These 4,600 "trays" of Bermuda-grass sod, sand and gravel make up Tech's new football field. In less than a month, the field will be carved up, and a convoy of forklifts will begin hauling the trays - one-by-one, for three or four days - from their current location on Tech Center Drive near the Corporate Research Center to the refitted floor of Lane Stadium.
The trays will then be pieced back together in the same relative positions. Two weeks later, the squares of sod should have interwoven themselves so thoroughly to transform the checkerboard framework into a seamless football field.
"It'll be softer, it'll be faster, and it will be drier," said Jim Clark, project superintendent with Clark Companies, which has built an interlocking/portable field at Giant Stadium in New Jersey.
Of course, jigsaw fields do not come cheap. When it's fully installed, Tech's new football field will have cost $1.3 million and will likely require more maintenance than the Hokies' previous sod field. But Tech athletics officials insist that's money well spent considering the improved playing conditions and the fact that Hokie football brought $15.6 million into Tech during the 1999-2000 season. A duplicate replacement of the old field would have cost between $500,000 and $750,000.
"I think what it's saying is we want the very best," said John Ballein, assistant director of athletics who handles football for Tech. "We will be the only [college] team in the country to have this."
Tech's veteran fans will undoubtedly notice a difference at Lane Stadium this fall. The Hokies' old field was 16 inches higher at the center than it was on the sidelines, which gave the field an arched look. These "crowns" are necessary for proper drainage but can also affect play. And Lane Stadium's old drainage system was so inadequate that the field was mostly dirt by season's end, Ballein said.
The new field will have an 8-inch crown, thanks to an in-ground drainage system. The trays, which sit on a stone and asphalt foundation under the field, are perforated to drain water into a collection system that carries the water away from the field and sidelines through large pipes. If the collection system becomes overwhelmed, a 2- to 3-inch space between the trays and the asphalt will effectively create a reservoir under the field, said Tom Gabbard, the associate athletic director for internal affairs.
The field will also have a ventilation system that can be used to either suck air and water away from the field or blow air through the trays to oxygenate the sod roots. Tech officials also plan to blow warm air through the ventilation system during cooler months to keep the grass green.
"We'll keep the temperature 60 to 70 degrees under there to keep the grass growing," Gabbard said. The interlocking system will also allow Tech to replace damaged or dead trays of sod without disrupting the rest of the field.
Today, Lane Stadium looks like a giant excavation site as construction crews bury drainage and ventilation pipes throughout the field and prepare for the sod trays. Tech has also added new bleachers for the home marching band and a concrete sidewalk for the rolling television cameras Tech hopes will broadcast Hokie games to a nationwide audience. The bleachers in the south end zone have also been removed and construction of the new 11,000-seat bleacher section will likely continue throughout the football season.
The sod trays are expected to be moved late this month - in time for Tech's scrimmages in August, Gabbard said.
"All this is is a great big putting green ... that we're going to make strong enough to land airplanes on," said Mike Albino, the field's burly caretaker, while staring out over the grass.
"Or at least 290-pound linemen," added Gabbard. |
