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October 9, 2018
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October 10, 2018
The Terrebonne football team is a traveling rock band.
With a 6-0 record and athletes all over the field, the Tigers are the talk of Houma — one of the best teams in the entire state of Louisiana.
But if it rains a couple times in a week, the Tigers are sometimes defeated by an undefeated and invincible foe — an opponent that also routinely triumphs over South Terrebonne, H.L. Bourgeois and Ellender, as well: Mother Nature.
The Tigers are one of four local public school teams who are left wondering each week about the playing conditions of the parish’s two natural grass fields — a plague that has hovered over the local football landscape for the past decade.
In Lafourche, the situation was equally dire, but they remedied the problem, using a facilities millage to place artificial turf on the three public high schools in the parish.
In Terrebonne, no such plans are in place, which is beginning to annoy coaches who are having to worry about opponents and also the weather and field conditions. Terrebonne has had to move one home game to Thibodaux High School already this season and others in the parish have had to be moved to different times or venues to ease the load on the rain-soaked grass.
“There has to be a way,” Terrebonne coach Gary Hill said. “The cost of maintaining these fields every year continues to grow and grow. Every year, it’s increasing and it’s getting to be a lot to handle. I think there has to be a solution we can find to get the turf like Lafourche has. I think that would be a great thing for our parish and for our kids.”
The Terrebonne Parish School Board has discussed the idea of field turf for many years — the most promising discussions taking place in 2014 when the board conducted a study about the issue, while setting aside $200,000 to explore getting new surfaces.
But those talks never accelerated past the study and the chatter around the board was that the area was just plagued by a few summers that were wetter than normal and that the problem would fix itself.
But coaches say there’s far more to it than that.
Statistics show that a natural grass field can comfortably host about 15-20 contests per year — given adequate weather.
But local fields are asked to handle more than that — 10-fold, which is why coaches say the fields will never be able to keep up — even in drier conditions.
The field at Terrebonne High School hosts two teams: Terrebonne and H.L. Bourgeois. The South Terrebonne field hosts the Gators and Ellender.
If each school has five home varsity games, that’s 10 contests on each field. If each school has three JV/freshman home games, that’s 16 contests on each field.
If each field hosts 4 middle school contests, that’s 20 contests on each field.
And that’s just from September-November. That doesn’t account for soccer games, band festivals, physical education classes, TPR football and other activities locally, which literally suck the life out of the field — bit by bit.
“The grass just can’t keep up,” Ellender football coach Dave McCormick said. “I cannot give enough credit to Coach (Richard) Curlin and the guys at South Terrebonne for the work they do throughout the week to keep up our field. But it’s almost like it’s a losing battle. We know there will be a rain and we know the ship will sink. It’s like plugging up a hole with bubble gum.”
There are different solutions around local field houses for how to fix the problem — one seems more realistic than the other.
The most obvious solution is to put turf on the two high school fields in Terrebonne Parish. The project would probably cost between $500,000 and $1 million, but it would eliminate the costs accompanied with sodding and painting the field, as well as fuel costs that come with mowing.
“It pays for itself,” Hill said. “If you really look at it.”
The turf fields last 10-15 years and replacing an outdated, expired turf surface is far less expensive than the project of laying the surface over what was formerly a grass field.
With the surfaces, the two Terrebonne stadiums would be able to easily host all high school athletic events, as well as other community activities.
Another incentive: When it rains, local practice fields get soaked and become unplayable. On turf, teams can practice any time, as long as it’s not during a lightning storm.
“We’ve only been outside a handful of times in the past month,” Hill said. “We’ve been working mostly in the gym.”
But the other plan would work, too — even if it’s a pie in the sky concept.
H.L. Bourgeois football coach Ryan Fournier said he, too, believes that the playing surfaces locally are unstable, but his idea for how to remedy the solution is different than others.
Fournier said he doesn’t want field turf, but instead would implore the school board to consider building stadiums for both H.L. Bourgeois and Ellender — the lone wolves locally without a true “home” stadium to play.
Fournier said it’s a disadvantage to his students to have to get on a bus and travel across town to play all of their “home” games.
He said if he has his own stadium, all of the workload on each field would be cut in half and every student-athlete in the parish would have a true home.
“My kids deserve their own home-stadium experience,” Fournier said. “Our students deserve that. Our community deserves that.”
Hill said he’s heard that proposal, too, but he said he’s skeptical because he believes that the workload on the fields is so great that it’d still be a problem even if there were 4 stadiums in the parish.
No matter which camp one is speaking to, though, the consensus is clear: something needs to be done. Veteran coaches like McCormick and Hill said they’ve coached in this area for decades and the problem is getting worse before it gets better.
“We’ve got to fix it,” Hill said. “Our kids deserve better. We have to find a way.”
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