RC Officials Hope Field Is Ready For Aug. 28 Football Opener
As work continues on Prasnicki-Ross Field at Veterans Stadium at Rockbridge County High School, the RC athletic department is hopeful that the field will be ready in time for football season at the end of August.
The field, which the Wildcats also use for lacrosse and soccer, will have a brand new artificial turf surface, built to professional-grade standards and designed to handle the heavy use that has worn down the school’s existing grass field over the years.
RC athletic director Anthony Marasco said the hope is to have the field finished by mid-August. The RC football team is scheduled to open the season at home against local rival Parry McCluer on Friday, Aug. 28, at 7 p.m.
Looking forward to the Wildcats’ athletic teams playing on the field, Marasco said, “We are thrilled. I come from a school that has a turf field. It makes it really easy when it rains. Most schools have to cancel their practices.”
Construction on the field started in early June, delayed by about a month due to lastminute stormwater management concerns raised by a third-parting engineering firm. In preparation for construction, the Wildcats’ lacrosse and soccer teams played their last few games of the spring season on the turf field at Southern Virginia University in Buena Vista. Over the summer, crews have been working on the field in the daytime heat. The project is following a timeline of roughly eight to 12 weeks, broken into several phases.
The artificial turf project is being contracted through LandTek using a product called Pivot, a non-infill turf system that doesn’t use crumb rubber or sand. With no loose infill material, there are no rubber pellets tracking into the players’ cleats, uniforms or school facilities, unlike in the case of older turf systems that have drawn scrutiny over safety concerns related to crumb rubber. The technology is similar to systems used at collegiate and professional venues, Dr. Phillip Thompson, the superintendent for Rockbridge County Public Schools, told The News-Gazette in early June.
The project is costing about $1.7 million. The Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors has committed $1.25 million from the county general fund to the school capital fund. Lexington, which sends students to RCHS under a 1989 consolidation agreement, is contributing a share of the turf field cost, estimated to be $267,888, and the remaining $178,172 will come from the School Board’s capital improvement escrow account.
Marasco said he’s confident that the field would be “the best facility in the district. We always want to give our kids the best.”
