Rockville Centre to receive $1 million to install artificial turf at Tighe Field

Posted
The field, which was covered with a tarp last week, will be able to be used year-round, according to Mayor Francis X. Murray, after artificial turf is installed later this year.
The field, which was covered with a tarp last week, will be able to be used year-round, according to Mayor Francis X. Murray, after artificial turf is installed later this year.
Ben Strack/Herald

The village will be installing artificial turf at Stephen E. Tighe Memorial Park this year, Mayor Francis X. Murray announced at the village board’s Feb. 4 meeting, after years of trying to improve the playing surface.

“We’ve fixed the irrigation, we have fertilized it, we’ve split-seeded it and we even sodded it,” Murray told residents at the meeting. “Nothing seems to work there to keep it in fantastic shape.”

The project will be made possible through a $1 million grant, which State Sen. Todd Kaminsky helped the village secure, according to Murray, and will be finished by the summer, “if all goes well,” he added.

In 2003, the field, off of Windsor Avenue, was named for Stephen Tighe, a former Rockville Centre Soccer Club player, board member and coach who was killed in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. He worked with his brother-in-law, Timothy O’Brien, as a broker’s assistant for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of the World Trade Center’s north tower, which was struck by a commercial jet at 8:46 a.m. that morning. Tighe was 41.

Once the turf is installed, Murray said, the field, which is now used about seven months out of the year, could be utilized year-round. “It’s always flooded and muddy,” he said of its current condition.

The funding for the project is through the New York State Senate’s State and Municipal Grant Program. 

“Providing a state of the art field where Rockville Centre’s children can play is important to me,” Kaminsky said, “and I was proud to secure this grant to make the renovation of Tighe Field a reality.”