Marin Catholic High School with the three bases, home plate and the pitcher's mound all dirt and the rest of the field synthetic turf. Three years later, they had us tear out the dirt except at the mound and install a brown colored synthetic turf at home plate area and all the bases. The dirt infiltrating into the turf was a maintenance headache around the bases."
EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY, RICHMOND "Our infield is all synthetic (Tiger Turf ),
parts of it are just clay colored," head baseball coach Jason Stein says. "Our outfield is natu- ral sod." During the season Stein grooms the synthetic turf with the machine he was given by the field builder. "I just run it behind the John Deere for 15 minutes a week during the season," he says. This is the field's third year and Stein reports no problems, no rips in sliding areas. "I am a proponent of the syn- thetic infield," he says. "Even though I have a turf degree!" Stein earned a bachelor's degree in ornamental horticulture from EKU as well as a master's degree in sports administration.
CANISIUS COLLEGE, BUFFALO "We are a multi-use (A-Turf ) field and
have turf everywhere except our mounds and home plates (bb/sb) to work," says Jon Lyons, assistant facility director for Canisius College. Daily maintenance, we hit the re- moved dirt with a garden rake and steel brush to loosen it and then hit it with a push broom back into the circles. We let it go our first year and had a lot of work to do to get the circle back into shape. We used a power washer and that worked great to blast the hardened clay out and we then filled the rub- ber back in. We now do the power wash once a year. "Game days are similar to our daily/weekly
work. We run into trouble with time because we have soccer and lacrosse going on as we try to do work on it, it can get a little dangerous with lacrosse out there," he says. "The migration of dirt/clay into the turf
surrounding the mounds and home plates is a constant battle, but it is nothing compared to the work involved [when] we had a grass field.
"Looking back and talking with our coaching staff, being in the Northeast we should have 'turfed' home plate. It would allow us to use it in a great deal more in all seasons," Lyons says. ■
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