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Liz Hagan

Now that football season is underway, fans may have noticed something different about the field. Over the summer, the old turf was removed and replaced with a brand new turf surface.

This is the first time the turf field has been replaced since the original field was installed. According to Pete Huse, the athletic director at East, there’s a major improvement to this new style of field.

“[The field] is a foam-like material about a quarter inch thick that’s underneath the turf that improves the safety, and it’s also supposed to increase the longevity of the turf field,” Huse said.

Not only is the surface a major improvement, but the ‘CE’ logo in the center of the field is now facing the correct direction. When the new home bleachers were installed several years ago, the home side switched sides, causing the logo to face the opposing team bleachers.

“It wasn’t like they did it wrong the first time, it was just we changed sides where our home fans would sit, so we wanted to make sure that once we replaced the turf, the CE would be facing the right direction,” Huse said.

The East football field did not need replaced for about another year, however, North was purchasing a new turf surface for their field, so East purchased one as well.

“We felt that it was cost effective to purchase them at the same time than for North to get their field and then a couple years later go through the process again for us to get ours,” Huse said.

The cost of the East field was approximately $600,000 when purchased with North’s. Huse hopes that East saves money purchasing it this way, because in a year or two from now, the cost could increase by $150,000.

There was a large gap of time between when the old turf was pulled up and when the new turf was put down. The company who installed the new turf surface was behind on their other projects, so there was a month delay.

When asked how long it took to install the new turf surface, Huse said, “Too long in my opinion, but the actual installation was about three weeks.”