Thursday evening Chris Huntress, owner of Andover-based Huntress Associates, a firm that specializes in the layout of athletic fields, walked an audience at the high school Performing Arts Center through a slideshow of his company’s past work and then his concepts for how the track, football field, and baseball diamonds could be re-envisioned.
Huntress began by diagnosing some of the problems with the present high school athletic grounds. “Asphalt, particularly under a running track where it doesn’t have the pressure from car tires that it would [on] the road tends to dry out and crack over time,” he said. “About 20 to 24 years is the useful lifespan of asphalt under a resilient rubber track surface. What happens after that 20 years is that it dries out, it cracks, and those cracks telegraph into the rubber surface above and begin to tear it apart. I believe that what’s you saw over the last couple of years.”
He pointed out the current athletic fields, the parking areas, and grandstands didn’t comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the infields of the baseball diamonds are composed of stone dust.
Huntress waxed positive about the grounds the high school had to work with, marking that part of the report card with an A, literally. “Your site soils are type A, which means they’re well-drained sand and gravels … I’ve got clients that would kill for that kind of a site,” he said. He went on to say the high school enjoys an abundance of space, which is often not the case at other sites he’s evaluated.
“You guys have a really unique situation here with your proximity to the YMCA, the ice rink, to the skate park,” he said. “Really the abundance of land here to make the elbow room to do the things you need to do. It’s unique, and I congratulate you for it.”
What Huntress put forth was a concept where four multipurpose fields, a combination field hockey field/double softball diamond, a combination football field/track/athletic field, and a junior varsity baseball diamond would replace the existing facilities. Only one baseball diamond would survive the proposed transformation and remain in its present location.
Huntress emphasized he wasn’t advocating for grass or artificial turf in his design. He told the audience that on balance, the number of grass facilities and the number of artificial turf facilities his firm designs works out to be about 50/50.
Despite a request at the start of the forum to avoid reigniting the grass versus artificial turf debate, many people came to the microphones and weighed in on that very debate. Led by football Coach Don Herman and field hockey Coach Lisa Knight, the majority of audience who commented argued in favor of artificial turf. Several high school athletes did as well, noting that in their opinions, the high school’s grass fields are prone to causing injuries, and that in the sport of field hockey, especially, the ball performs very differently on artificial turf than it does on grass. Because the Vineyard practices on grass, they said, they are at a disadvantage against most other schools.
“I think this is a very well-conceived plan,” West Tisbury resident Chuck Hodgkinson said of the Huntress concept. A member of West Tisbury’s finance committee (and Chilmark’s conservation agent), he said he wasn’t present to speak in a governmental capacity, but to share personal thoughts.
Having previously spent time learning about both sides of the grass–artificial turf issue, he said of both groups, “What they’re trying to do is what’s best for our children. They just have a different way of approaching it.” He urged the debate to progress “civilly and objectively.”
Hodgkinson said he played lacrosse in high school and Division 1 soccer in college, the latter on both grass and artificial turf. He apologized to the school athletes present for the condition of the high school’s outdoor playing fields.
“We’re horrible on this Island about maintaining anything,” he said. “The fields are in their shape because we haven’t maintained them for you properly. That will change.”
Hodgkinson went on to say he found fault with low injury data former track and field facilities consultant Gale Associates provided regarding artificial turf as it focused on men in Division 1 football, but did not analyze women or the still developing bodies of young kids.
One of the most detailed comments came from Joe Mikos, president of Island youth lacrosse and hockey.
“We now have 140 kids, both girls and boys, ranging in ages from 7, which is our youngest, up to 15, in our youth lacrosse program,” he said. “Enrollment is up over 50 percent in two years, and it’s climbing fast. We’ve already opened up registration, and our numbers are looking great. Our players have a combined total of about 40 hours a week, that’s 160 a month, 640 for our season, playing lacrosse. We play seven days a week for several hours per day between games and practices. Those fields get a ton of use just from youth lacrosse. We take over right after the high school finishes. There are only two lacrosse fields on this Island for us to use. That’s it. The condition of those fields, as we’ve all seen, is horrific at best — no offense.”
Mikos went on to say, “Youth sports are not losing kids to other sports. Youth hockey doesn’t lose any kids to lacrosse, to soccer, baseball. In fact we supply a lot of those kids. We lose kids to comfy couches, video games, bad choices hanging out in town. We’re trying to avoid that. That’s why we push these kids to go into sports. All the reasons you put a kid into team sports are the things we’re trying to instill in our children. We need more places to play. This is basically just scratching the surface.” The audience erupted in applause.
Mikos continued, “I can’t stress to you enough how important it is to build state-of-the-art facilities for our children. We just spent $3.2 million to renovate the ice rink. If you haven’t seen it, it’s phenomenal. Our youth hockey program has grown almost by 100 percent in five years. We now put 50 House Mites on the ice every year, and that’s phenomenal. It’s never happened before … So I encourage the school committee, I encourage the town, to really get behind this. I’m not going to argue turf or grass. You’ve all heard that before. I’m not going to change anybody’s mind whichever way you go. We need this. This looks phenomenal. Thank you for all your efforts.”