KP Turf Field

To the King Philip Athletic Community, 

I hope all is well and that you are all greatly enjoying the start of our Fall athletics season. With each sports season that comes and goes, our top priority is the health and safety of our student-athletes.

Recently, a Boston Globe article was published regarding aging turf fields and how they may carry the risk of head injury if not properly maintained. As you may know, our school has a turf field that opened in the Fall of 2015. 

Although we were not mentioned in the article, we would like to assure all community members that this should not be a concern as we regularly maintain our turf field and conduct seasonal testing to ensure our turf’s shock absorption is up to league standards.

We have a maintenance contract with the manufacturer of our field, Field Turf, and they perform annual and semi-annual maintenance for fields. Currently, the district is conducting maintenance work through an Advanced Care Visit, which consists of two days of maintenance throughout each season to ensure that we have a clean and leveled field. This maintenance allows us to help improve the field’s shock absorption abilities. 

Once the Advanced Care Visit is complete, we conduct GMAX Testing to measure the shock absorption within the playing surface. The data collected through the GMAX Testing drives the maintenance we do on the field to ensure that it is within a safe spec and within industry parameters. We are pleased to announce that currently, our field is well within the parameters of its shock absorption criteria.

In addition to shock absorption, we also regularly test the temperatures of the field. We follow the MIAA Heat Modification Policy so if the Wet Bulb Globe Thermometer reaches a specific threshold we have to stop playing or play with modifications. 

We continuously strive to find new proactive approaches to maintaining and monitoring our fields. Due to our heightened maintenance schedule and regularly conducted testing, we have not seen any patterns of concussions or injuries.

Should there be any concerns regarding our facilities, they will be communicated immediately to all of our athletics programs and we will discuss ways in which we can resolve them with as little impact on our athletics.

I encourage anyone with additional questions to reach out to Facilities Manager Joe Zahner at zahnerj@kingphilip.org.

Sincerely,
Gary Brown,
Athletic Director

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