You’ll see it when you watch DePauw football’s season opener at Blackstock Stadium on Saturday.
A strip of dead grass – or no grass at all – is the result of the football team practicing on the stadium’s field because there aren’t any other places it can go.
Fans and teams have to wait for the day Blackstock acquires synthetic turf ­- and that may take a while – according to Stevie Baker-Watson, DePauw’s athletic director.
The estimated up-front cost is $1.5 million. Designs for the stadium are still being developed and the board of trustees needs to approve those plans along with funding.
“The easy answer is we would like to put a synthetic turf out at the athletic precinct as soon as we can, but those hurdles are pretty substantial,” Baker-Watson said.
In the meantime, the football team is the only team currently in a non-desirable location. Last year, the field hockey team was forced off its home field – McKeen Field – when disease and heat rendered the field unusable. It moved to Blackstock West Field, the previous site of the football practice field.
Rob Harper, assistant director of facilities and grounds, said he would like to see the football team practice on McKeen like it did last season, but McKeen is, once again, recovering and re-growing.
During the summer, Harper dropped 80 tons of dirt on McKeen to fill in divots and undulations.
“We have our issues with that field. We’ve always had [issues],” Harper said. “Unfortunately, we’ve had summers where it’s compounded those issues.”
The field’s problems don’t stop with disease and divots. McKeen slopes down to its west end by seven feet, meaning teams run uphill or downhill. It may not be much, Harper said, but it’s enough to look to the future of the athletic precinct for answers.
Last October, Page Cotton, DePauw’s previous athletic director, revealed a master plan for the athletic precinct that included a second, stadium-like area on the present site of McKeen. There would be two fields running north-south, instead of its current east-west direction. While that could be in the future for the precinct, as Baker-Watson said, the plans must be approved first by the board of trustees and funding must be found.
Despite the hurdles to vast improvement, the athletic department is making small, but substantial improvements where it can.
At Blackstock West Field, the field hockey team plays on Bermuda grass mixed with Rye grass. Harper and his team used that field as an experiment last year in hopes of finding a warm-weather grass that can withstand hot, dry summers.
Harper thinks the experiment paid off.
“It turned out to be a huge success,” he said. “Field hockey liked it, and that has become their field. We had a very mild winter, so it had no damage at all. So there’s still a question in my head, if we have a bad winter, how bad will it get?”
Bermuda grass is typically grown south of the Ohio River. It loves heat and little rain. However, in the winter months, the grass can turn brown. That’s why Harper plants Rye grass with the Bermuda grass so fields look green. Because of the success of Blackstock West, Baker-Watson and Harper went ahead and put Bermuda on Boswell Field.
“Ideally, everyone wants to be on synthetic, but that costs a lot,” Harper said.
In May, Boswell’s Blue and Rye grasses were uprooted, and the field was first laser-leveled, then an electrical conduit was placed under the field and the irrigation system was re-done. Baker-Watson said it cost around $25,000.
“Synthetic turf is on the horizon for us in terms of long-term planning,” she said. “We’re in that part of the country where weather is unpredictable – it’s hot and dry or cold and wet. We need to start making decisions on how we’ll be able to sustain the field surfaces at the outdoors precinct.”
While there is no set timetable for when synthetic turf will arrive at DePauw, Harper is slowly improving the quality at each field.
“We’re moving,” Harper said. “It’s not as fast as everyone would like. I’d like to hit on everybody’s sport, but we’ll get there. With the master plan going, there are some exciting things going to happen out there. It’s not immediate, but it’s coming.”