Back in the early 2000s, there were cries from the sports wilderness as Bridgeport High School announced it was embarking on a plan to replace the grass with an artificial surface at Wayne Jamison Field. That plan became reality at the start of the 2005 sports year.

 

The Indians would be one of the few schools in the state that have the artificial surface available. Tradition, many said, was taking a hit. After all, how many times had Bridgeport’s grind-it-out ground game benefitted by playing in the slop while other teams – many faster, many with potent passing attacks – couldn’t operate on poor field conditions.

 

Fast forward roughly a decade. Bridgeport enters the 2015 season with a 10-game schedule. Nine of those games will be on an artificial surface. Only Bridgeport’s game at Lewis County will be a game played on grass. The newest addition to the fake grass club is Robert C. Byrd and, quite honestly, no surface needed replaced more.

 

To this day I still get complaints,  rather more like general comments, that going to turf was a bad move not only for Bridgeport, but football in general. Again, they point to the tradition and that football was meant to be played on grass.

 

I agree 100 percent. I also will be the first to tell them that grass fields, although still being utilized, aren’t really as practical and meet the needs of student athletes. Because of that, high school football is now officially a part of the “Turf Nation.” It’s a nation created by necessity, not the lobbying of turf companies or some conspiracy that will likely be a reality show since topics are officially running out.

 

No one understands that better than BHS Coach Josh Nicewarner. You see, Nicewarner was a player on the late 1990 teams and the 2000 state championship team. It was as a member of those teams that the use of the field from various teams from football, soccer and others – from prep, jayvee, freshman, middle school and youth sports – began to turn Jamison Field’s surface into one that would require  a few years off of it for it to potentially get back to where it needed to be.

 

Some suggested that should have been done years ago. Here’s the problem: You not only don’t have facilities available to relocate your games as well as some practices, you also have the very real possibility of having the field destroyed with just one game in severe weather or even continual overuse once play would resume. Nicewarner said that’s still the case and the reason more schools are switching.

 

“I’ll give you a perfect example; our scrimmage against Parkersburg South was on grass and their field was in dynamite shape. The field wasn’t hard and it was manicured and nice to play on,” said Nicewarner. “It’s the type of grass field you dream about playing on.”

 

The problem?

 

“The coaches told me it wouldn’t stay that way long. He said with their games, soccer and so many other activities that by the time they played the first game of football that it was going to be in bad shape,” said Nicewarner. “That was the situation our school was in. People think sometimes that our turf is a luxury. It was never a luxury. It was a necessity.”

 

Nicewarner laughed when told about complaints and concerns from the “traditionalists” about turf. He said he occasionally hears them too.

 

“The colleges and pro teams that have the grass have full time crews working on them and really limit the activity on them,” said Nicewarner. “You have so many activities taking place on high school fields that unless you have fields for every sport and every sport has their practice field you’re going to have problems. Until I see someone ponying up millions for land and to prepare the land for fields, this is the way it’s going to keep going.”

 

Nicewarner said he recalls in his final years of high school practicing on the outfield of the BHS baseball field. It, he said, was a mess.

 

“By October, it was a dust bowl. You were actually using tennis shoes at the end of the year at practice because spikes no longer worked,” said Nicewarner. “That’s the reality of what we dealt with and why we’re looking to replace it soon because there aren’t better options.  For those in the real world, they know we didn’t switch for any other reason because, ideally, Bridgeport was great for decades on natural grass. Sometimes you can’t explain reality to everyone so you just tend to shake your head and move on.”

 

With turf, it’s moving forward. That’s what you do when you’re part of turf nation.