Alec Austin ’19, Michael Zeng ’19: Construction on Episcopal’s main turf field, the Smith field, began in November 2016. According to Josie Tomaino, girls’ varsity lacrosse coach, the constant use of the field was the main reason for its sudden replacement. “It had shown significant wear and tear, which is completely normal, given the average “life” of a turf is about 10 years, especially taking into account the number of athletes who utilize the field across different sports teams and programs,” she explained.
As Tomaino alluded to, many of Episcopal’s sports teams use this field, including the boys football and girls lacrosse teams. Club sports teams and camps that have access to EA’s facilities also use the turf field.
The new synthetic turf field took one and a half months to install and was completed on December 23rd. The girls’ lacrosse team will be the first official EA team to compete on the new field and Coach Tomaino expressed her excitement, s
aying, “We’re very grateful and excited that we will have a new turf field to practice and compete on this spring!” Taylor Lucey ‘17, girls lacrosse captain, also expressed her excitement saying, “I think the new field is a great addition to the athletic facilities. I really like how the lines are blue and white showing more school spirit than the old field which was lined with yellow and red. I am really excited to play on it this spring and we are hoping to have a really great season to break it in.”
In addition to the installation of the new turf, a new track will be installed later this year. Like the new turf field, many coaches are adamant that the replacement of the track is necessary. “We definitely need a new track,” said Jim Farrell, boys’ varsity track coach. “We put this track in eight and a half years ago and it had some issues right from the start. When you walk around the track, you can see that much of the top coat is worn off and there are gashes in different areas.”
The track will not be installed until the summer so that girls and boys track can finish out their seasons. Mr. Lauer, Associate Director of Facilities confirmed, “Construction will start in Mid-May, right after the track season ends. It should be completed in about five to six weeks depending on the weather.” The track will be completed by the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year for the winter and spring track teams to compete on. Aside from the regular season meets, EA will host the the 2018 and 2019 Inter-Ac track championships which Farrell mentioned “will be great to showcase our new track.”
The new track will be unique because instead of being red, it will be blue. Athletic director, Gina Buggy confirmed that after much discussion with “the track coaches, the plant and operations staff, and the people who install the track, the decision was made to go with blue.” The color was picked not only because it is our school color, but also because it will be able to withstand the weather. Coach Buggy noted that the color was selected because “exposure to sunlight and the elements can diminish a track, so we wanted to be sure we picked a color that wouldn’t have that problem.”