Greenfield-Central soccer players, seen here competing against New Palestine in a 2022 sectional match, will soon have new artificial turf on their home field. ROB BAKER | DAILY REPORTER
GREENFIELD — The Greenfield-Central school board made a couple of key decisions regarding athletic programs at its March 11 meeting.
One decision was to approve spending an estimated $800,000 to have artificial turf installed on the high school’s competitive soccer field in hopes of having the field ready for play sometime in August.
The other decision impacts future sixth-grade athletes, who will now be allowed to compete in a variety of sports at the junior high school, including tennis, golf, wrestling, cross country and track. The change does not affect the junior high school’s football, basketball and baseball teams.
The board voted unanimously to approve both decisions.
Superintendent Harold Olin said the school board has spent the past couple of months studying the cost and benefits of adding permanent artificial turf to the high school’s soccer field, which is just across the street from Hancock Public Library on McKenzie Road, just north of the high school.
The board approved granting the job to Maumee Bay Turf in Oregon, Ohio, the same company that installed artificial turf on Greenfield-Central High School’s football field in 2017.
Olin said the school board hopes to have the project complete by August, in time for the high school’s competitive fall soccer season.
The school’s boys and girls soccer teams will have full access to the high school’s practice field, which sits just west of the competition field. The practice field will not be resurfaced but remain natural grass.
A concrete walking path connects the practice field to the soccer complex parking lot.
In addition to approving the artificial turf project, the school board also approved allowing sixth graders at Greenfield and Maxwell intermediate schools to compete in junior high school team sports, something that hasn’t been done since 2010.
Olin said the decision impacts sports in which athletes compete more as individuals than as a team. Sixth graders still won’t be allowed to compete on the junior high school’s football, basketball or baseball teams.
For years, sixth graders haven’t been able to join in junior high school sports because the middle schools are on a different schedule than the junior high, dismissing 2:15 p.m. whereas the junior high school lets out at 3:30 p.m.
Olin commended the Boys & Girls Clubs of Hancock County for stepping in to fill in the gap by providing staff to monitor sixth graders at the junior high school, where they will be bussed or otherwise transported to for after-school sports. Families of sixth grade athletes will be charged a nominal fee for the service.
