Mother Nature takes toll on intramural fields

The outfield of the intramural softball field off of Sprigg Street. Photo by Sean Burke

An abundance of time and money have been spent to make the fields playable, however the damage has already been done, and alternative solutions are already being considered for the future.

"Just weather-related, last winter we lost our grass on all three of our fields. This also occurred on city fields, the city of Cape lost several fields as well," assistant director of intramurals Jennifer Rose said. "Just the type of grass we had and the type of winter we had didn't mix."

As the spring of 2014 approached, Rose began noticing the deterioration of the fields. When the spring semester ended, Rose started looking for answers on how to repair the fields, but her options were limited.

"We did put seed down this summer," Rose said. "The seed was questionable whether or not it was going to work, but it was one of our options. We didn't have the ability to put it down on all three fields. We did go ahead and move forward with two of the fields, those fields do have grass now, that's our Bertling [Street] field and our upper Bertling field."

While the grass is there and the fields are playable, Rose is still doing damage control as the grass has already begun to show wear and tear.

"The grass kind of grows almost horizontal, so it looks like we've got this nice coverage in there but if you really dig around in that grass you'll see there's not a lot of roots for as much grass as there appears to be," Rose said.

Nonetheless, play still continues on both Bertling fields, but the field off of Sprigg Street is completely unplayable.

"We don't consider it safe enough to play any of the real sports on, so it is completely offline," Rose said. "It is open for recreational use, but we're not scheduling anything on there because it's more dirt than grass right now."

With only two intramural fields open for play, Rose had to make significant changes to the sports provided by the intramural office in order to preserve what quality of field is left and to ensure that the fields will be ready for spring.

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Mother Nature takes toll on intramural fields