By:Jennifer Marino
It-s something we-re looking at, said Village Administrator Ron Wasson, who was planning to take a walk on a field of the new turf. Chaminade High School in Mineola and George W. Hewlett High in Hewlett replaced their soccer fields with the turf last October. St. John-s University and Chelsea Piers made the switch in September 2002.
The subject of artificial turf first came up at a Village Board of Trustees briefing session on March 22. Trustee Jim Sutton said he had been reviewing the fields in the village and brought up the idea of the new turf.
Though nothing is like real grass, the new artificial variety doesn-t need time to rest and is all-weather. [It-s] light-years past old artificial turf, said Wasson.
The cost of replacing a grass field with the artificial turf used to be as high as $1.3 million, but now it-s half that, $650,000, according to village spokesman Jeff Kluewer. The village would probably look to fund the fields collaboratively with help from the Rockville Centre sports groups and donations from benefactors, according to Wasson. Sutton mentioned the need to do a cost-feasibility study when he first brought up the idea. At Hewlett High, the PTA paid for the new field.
In talking to administrators at Chaminade, Wasson said they told him it was the best thing they ever did. The turf is maintenance-free, and has a longer life expectancy than other fields.
Rockville Centre does not have enough fields to accommodate all of the village-s sports groups, and the artificial turf could help alleviate that shortage. The new lights on the fields at the Skelos Sports Complex would allow for a lot more playing time.
One of the best-known manufacturers of the turf is FieldTurf in Georgia, which did the installations at Chaminade, Hewlett, St. John-s and Chelsea Piers. The turf itself is 2 1/2-inch-long plastic blades of grass in a backing that allows for drainage. The rubber pellets, made from tires, are distributed among the grass for cushioning. The synthetic grass is especially useful on fields used for soccer, which is more punishing to grass than other sports.
