"What a Great Venue..."

A few days ago, I joined Scott, who’s our director of facilities management and construction, on the front row of the spanking new bleachers in the Athletic Center and received an update about the facelifts that were occurring before our eyes and across the nearby bridge at the Grover Jones Field and Jim Hickey Track.

 

Boxes of equipment were stacked high. A guy on a pneumatic lift was toiling away high in the rafters. While the noise of hammers and drills wasn’t exactly deafening, suffice it to say that my recorder picked it all up quite nicely.

 

“This is Charlie McFall’s dream,” Scott began, referring to our longtime football coach and athletic director who retired in 2014 after 43 years at Collegiate. “Years ago, we were talking, and, as Charlie was known to do, he drew this little sketch and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could have bleachers in here and make it our home court? What a great venue that would be!’

 

“We studied this for a decade. Last summer when the roof leaked, we had to replace the floor, so we re-oriented and striped a new court, made it run north-south, and started planning for grandstands.”

 

The upshot was three sections in a U-shaped configuration that will seat 1,283 spectators: 402 each on the east and west sides and 479 on the south. Lighting and acoustics have been enhanced, a new sound system and scoreboards will be installed, a fresh coat of paint has spruced the place up, public restrooms are being constructed off the back hallway, and the training room is being renovated.

 

“We’re taking an old (1984-vintage) building, retrofitting it, and putting a modern touch to it,” Scott said. “It will look and behave a lot differently. We can use it for basketball, volleyball, indoor soccer. We’ll use it for practices. Of course, PE is the biggest client.

 

“If we want to hold Graduation here…maybe put a stage on the north side, folding chairs on the court and use the stands. We could actually increase our capacity, which would be nice on a rainy day.”

 

“And across the bridge?” I said.

 

“Want to walk out there?” Scott asked.

 

I thought for a second. A very brief second.   We were sitting in the air conditioning. The temperature outside was in the high 90’s.

 

“We both know what that area looks like,” I replied. “Let’s stay put. I’ll visualize.”

 

Scott proceeded to explain that after a decade of almost constant use, the FieldTurf surface of the Grover Jones Field had become threadbare, especially down the middle.

 

In late May, a crew of workmen rolled in, removed the old “carpet,” and installed AstroTurf 3d3.

 

“The great thing about this product,” Scott said, “is that it has three different strands of synthetic turf: straight blade, curly blade, and lower blade so it holds infill, which is the rubber and the sand, a lot denser.”

 

“So those little black pellets won’t fly all over the place?” I asked.

 

“As we did our due diligence,” he answered, “we found this coated product not only lowers temperature but encapsulates the rubber so it doesn’t leech. Underneath it, we installed a shock pad. We can potentially reduce head injuries. This is a wonderful product.”

 

The old turf didn’t go into the dumpster. It actually became part of a massive recycling project. The AstroTurf folks cut it into 162 precise sections, each weighing 4,500 pounds, rolled them into 18 units, and loaded the units onto two flatbed trucks which hauled them to a community park in Johnson City, TN.

 

“So the Grover Jones Field weighed 729,000 pounds, 364.5 tons,” Scott said. “We’re happy it found a new home.”

 

Once the field was securely in place, a crew from Precision Sports Surfaces out of Charlottesville began the resuscitation of the track.

 

“What we found in the (original) installation of the track (in 2001) was that it was uneven: varied from flat to six inches,” Scott said. “It was beyond its useful life. There had been major repairs over time. It wasn’t cost-effective.

 

“(Workmen) milled the track down to sub-base. Just a few days ago, (they) put down new asphalt that’s graded properly with horizontal planarity.”

 

The track is now curing. Did you even know that asphalt needed to cure? The process takes three weeks. Then, the new surface will go down, and the lane lines and other markings will be painted.

 

“The first day of (pre-season) practice is August 15,” Scott said.  “We’ll button everything up well in advance.”

                -- Weldon Bradshaw