Reed leaders working to improve football field conditions

Tribune photo by John Byrne - Dirt patches, void of grass, dot the football/soccer field at Reed High. RHS athletic officials are focused on improving the field quality by the start of the fall sports season.

It's no secret the football field, which doubles as the soccer field at Reed, is among the worst fields in northern Nevada. RHS athletic officials have been busy working with groundskeepers to strategize and put a plan into effect about the best way to rejuvenate the playing surface on the east Sparks school's football/soccer field.

"That's really our focus right now," Raiders athletic director Ron Coombs said. "We got the rocks back out there and those are there to discourage the weekend warriors. Reed is seemingly at times used as a public park. People find their way onto our field. The rocks are designed to keep people off. We're also doing some fertilizing with seeding."

Grass struggles to grow on much of Reed's field. That leaves weeds in place of grass and leads to many large bare patches of playing surface. Poor maintenance practices in the past and inadequate drainage issues are big reasons why the quality of the Raiders' facility falls far short of the Raiders' quality football product on the field.

Reed's football team is the winningest program in northern Nevada over the past decade but while the RHS gridders gain even more consistent success, the field is consistently poor. Still, veteran Reed football coach Ernie Howren said the playing surface does not affect what his team can do under the lights on fall Friday nights.

"It doesn't affect us," he said. "It's just a little disappointing, more of a pride thing. We'd like to have our facility look better, especially for who is out there working so hard, our football and soccer players. But, that's where we're at right now. There's not a lot of money in the district and the kind of money we're talking about is something nobody has right now."

Coombs believes there are multiple factors that have led to the degradation of Reed's facility. The first is the school district's decision over a decade ago to use effluent water rather than fresh water on the field's sod. Coombs cited soil specialists who have shared with him that the field has a top layer of high salt concentration, due to using effluent water.

In order to break up that high salt concentration, Reed's grounds staff has been overwatering the fields and over-seeding areas. Still, Coombs wonders how effective that can be if the same effluent water is still being used.

"That salt layer needs to be broken up," Coombs said. "On the advice of the district, we've done what is called salt flushing. We're overwatering to try and flush that out. We're really just trying to break up the soil so it can breathe and grass seed can germinate.

"But I asked the same question. Are we breaking up that layer by using the same effluent water? There probably will be some negative effect too, but it's what we've got. We've got to break up that ground because right now with that salt layer, we can't get great root growth."

Read more here:
Reed leaders working to improve football field conditions