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| AstroTurf President Bryan Peeples with Maryville Head Coach George Quarles |
(MARYVILLE, Tennessee) - George Quarles
is not a man to shy away from big goals.
In fact,
while most high school football coaches set a goal of winning even a single
state championship in their career, Quarles starts every season with that goal
in mind.
As the head
coach of the Maryville Rebels, most would say he’s done pretty well. This year, he will seek his 10th
state championship title in his 14th year at the helm of the
Tennessee powerhouse. Quarles’ overall
record at the helm is 179-13.
This year,
however, will bring a major change. As
Quarles looks out over the football field this morning, crews will be rolling
out the all new AstroTurf football field that the team will play on in their
quest for another state title.
The change
to the new synthetic was born of necessity and a desire to maintain pace with a
growing trend. First among the reasons
was use of the field.
“We have an
overuse problem,” said Quarles. “We
have, not only the high school using the field, but the middle school teams,
our youth league teams, our band practices on it quite a bit, and our PE
classes use it. So, we just have a lot
of teams that are using the field and by the end of the season, we don’t have
any grass to play on. We’ve been pretty
fortunate that we’ve been playing in November and December, but by then you don’t
have grass, just some mud.”
Maryville
City Schools Board Member Denny Garner said the amount of use contributed to
the deterioration of the field, as well as a drainage problem.
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| AstroTurf's Mitchell Truban, Mary City Schools Board Member Denny Garner, AstroTurf's Thomas Mullins, Maryville Head Coach George Quarles |
“It was going to cost something like $280,000 to re-drain
and put natural grass back on the field,” said Garner. “Then we started looking at AstroTurf and
other products. We came to the conclusion
that we could come out ahead financially by changing to an artificial surface. We spend about $30,000 a year on our field
now for maintenance. That’s a
maintenance fee that will dissolve and go away.
We can put that money back and bank it for re-turfing down the road.”
Quarles also cited other reasons for the change, including aesthetics,
a consistent playing surface that’s always available, and development of
artificial turf that looks and plays more like natural grass.
Maryville, in the past, has conducted practices at the
University of Tennessee’s indoor practice facility, which also has
AstroTurf. That surface caught their
attention. Officials and team members also
visited a number of fields during the decision-making process.
“We did a tremendous amount of study and research,” said
Garner. “We decided that AstroTurf was,
by far, in our opinion, the best turf product out there at this time. When you visit a company like this, that
pretty much does it all from start to finish, from the build of it to the
install, you just feel so much more comfortable with the fact that you’ve seen
their manufacturing operations.”
Quarles mentioned a couple of other intangibles in the
process.
“We liked the product, for one,” he said. “But we were really impressed with the people
at AstroTurf. Bryan Peeples, the company
president came to our school. The sales
staff and project engineers have been very responsive. We just developed a good relationship with
them. They were up front with us. We didn’t hear any negatives about other
competitors. We just heard the good
things about AstroTurf. We appreciated
that and we’ve not regretted our decision for a second.”
A contingent of officials from Maryville visited AstroTurf’s
manufacturing facilities in Dalton, Georgia two weeks ago and that visit
further solidified the decision.
“We learned a lot about the process,” said Quarles. “What impressed me the most, though, was that
during the visit to one of the plants, I watched Bryan Peeples take time to
stop and speak to the line employees, calling them by name, and engaging them
in conversation. They truly are a family
company and we like that.”
The field will be constructed of AstroTurf GameDay Grass
Xtreme 60. The surface contains the
Horseshoe fiber, an Omega-shaped fiber which has better mechanical memory and
remains upright longer, has a more grass-like ball roll, and offers the best
aesthetics of any field. It is combined
with the AstroTurf XP fiber. XP is a
slit-film product which offers better infill encapsulation, best resistance to
wear, and great pile density. The
product also features texturized RootZone.
RootZone is a fiber which acts as a thatch layer, creating minimal
rubber splash, uniform energy return, and better shock absorbency, while
encapsulating the infill and reducing migration.
The field also has a face weight of 60 ounces of fiber per square
yard, one of the highest in the industry.
This adds to the durability provided by the fiber shape.
The Horseshoe fiber’s shape also allows it to reflect light and
heat away from the surface. That, in
combination with AstroFlect heat reduction technology, can lower surface
temperatures by as much as 18%.
“Maryville is one of the nation’s premier football programs
and they are getting the finest synthetic playing surface on the market,” said
AstroTurf President Bryan Peeples. “We
are excited that AstroTurf will play a role in continuing the winning tradition
of the Rebels and Coach Quarles.”
The AstroTurf crew arrived on-site this morning to begin the
installation process, which will take about two weeks.
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