New turf field on track at Monticello High

Monticello High School football players will soon be juking defenders and intercepting passes on synthetic turf.

As of last week, most of the field’s sod had been removed and piles of gravel lay in waiting, to be used for part of the field’s base. Workers are on track to having the field completely done and field lines painted by Aug. 14, in time for summer football practices.

“It’s a flat surface that your cleats stick into. There’s no slipping. There’s no sliding … It’s basically like running on a grass track,” said Monticello fullback and middle linebacker Aaron DiGregorio, who’ll be a senior this season and expects to run faster and make sharper cuts on turf. “We’ll just be able to elevate our game to that next level.”

As with Monticello High, Albemarle and Western Albemarle high schools plan to install turf fields, for about $600,000 each. An anonymous donor has given $325,000 to each of the three schools, $75,000 is being allotted to each of the schools from the county’s budget, and the schools have to raise the rest of the money — about $200,000 each — from additional private donations.

Western Albemarle and Albe-marle high schools haven’t raised enough money yet. However, Steele Howen, who oversees athletics for the county school division, said she hopes at least one of those schools will be able to begin installing turf by winter.

“Hopefully, when the community sees how impressive this field looks, we’ll get other donations for those schools,” Howen said.

Sod has already been ripped from the Monticello field. In its place, turf will be installed on top of a bed of rubber and gravel. Field lines for soccer and football will be permanently painted on the turf field, and temporary lines will be painted prior to games for other sports.

Turf fields, unlike grass, can be used repeatedly without significant damage, which opens up more opportunities for public use.

Though the turf will have to be replaced about once a decade, proponents have said that replacement costs will be less expensive than maintaining grass. A 2007 analysis conducted by Charlottes-ville, for example, concluded that using synthetic turf for a football field, instead of grass, would save the city up to $12,000 per year in maintenance costs.

Albemarle school officials have also discussed the idea of helping to pay for replacement costs by charging user fees for the public to use the fields.

Some Albemarle officials and residents had expressed concern about the safety of the fields. However, many officials say the chemicals in turf don’t pose a threat and that the consistent terrain could help prevent knee and ankle injuries. Albemarle schools are using AstroTurf GameDay XPE, made by GeneralSports Venue, which Monticello’s athletics director, Fitzgerald Barnes, said was chosen because it has antimicrobial components that kill disease-causing micro-organisms.

Monticello head football coach Brud Bicknell said that the team is looking forward to playing on turf and that it’s a major upgrade from the grass field, in which the surface was “incredibly hard.”

He said that he doesn’t expect the turf field to actually affect how the team plays though.

“It plays almost identically to a natural field,” he said.

Another advantage, DiGregorio said, is that games will never be canceled because of rain.

As for how well Monticello will do this year, DiGregorio said that though they’ll have to recover from losing a lot of starting seniors, he thinks the team will be in the running for the district championship.

The Mustangs won the Group AA, Division 3 state championship in 2007 and captured the regional championship title last year, before losing to James Monroe High School in the state semifinal.

The anonymous donor who gave the three Albemarle high schools $325,000 each has also offered to give Charlottesville High School $325,000 to install a turf field.

Charlottesville School Board member Juandiego Wade said that the board hasn’t decided whether to give CHS the green light to install a turf field, adding however that, “It’s not a dead issue.”

Wade said that the School Board would be evaluating the safety of turf fields and that if turf were to be installed at Charlottesville High, all of the money would come from private donations.