Turning Plans into Places: A CEI Podcast

Ep. 7 - Fields That Last: Engineering Beyond the Turf

• CEI Engineering Associates

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Great facilities don’t start with green fibers; they start with a base that never blinks. We sit down with Jeff Bresee and John Valastro to unpack how sports engineering transforms fields from maintenance headaches into safe, durable, multi-sport assets. From those early, painful turf installs to post-flood recoveries that reopen in 24 hours, we trace what actually keeps lines straight, balls true, and athletes protected: soils, drainage, and a design tailored to the site and the sport.

Jeff explains why one-size-fits-all specs fail in the real world—especially in floodplains, on high water tables, or on expansive Texas clays. We get into breathable versus fully sealed systems, how infill migration burns fields early, and why annual, vendor-performed re-leveling can nearly double turf life. John brings a superintendent’s view: politics, community expectations, and the responsibility to stretch taxpayer dollars. Together, we show how to plan maintenance, protect warranties, and tune surfaces for football speed, baseball hops, softball wear paths, and soccer traction.

We also explore budget-savvy creativity. Multi-sport practice complexes with tall netting and integrated lighting let one field serve five programs without compromise. Indoors, ditching concrete for drainable bases makes facilities cleaner and cheaper. With heat rules tightening, new roof skins can cut shade structure costs in half. And for tracks, post-tensioned concrete offers a century-scale base compared with the 25–30 year life of asphalt. The throughline is simple: independent, site-specific engineering delivers performance, resilience, and real ROI.

Enjoy the conversation, then take a fresh look at your campus plan. If this sparked ideas for your field, track, or indoor build, share the episode with your team, subscribe for more deep dives, and leave a quick review so others can find the show.

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to our podcast, Plans to Places, where we explore the critical dynamics that impact the built environment. Today, specifically, we're going to be focusing on sport facility engineering. I've got with me a couple really great experts at work across the country, and I'm really excited to introduce them to you today. So welcome, Jeff and John.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for having us. Glad we'd be here.

SPEAKER_02:

Jeff, uh Jeff Rizzi, will you please introduce yourself to our audience? Let them know a little bit about your background and how you got here.

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. It's quite a story, but I'll try to shorten it into in the year 2000, I moved to Texas to be a water engineer and instead stumbled into a place that uh was doing synthetic turf field at their stadium in Abilene. Um didn't know that, number one, the significance of sports in Texas, um, but also the significance of that product in a in a market that uh has you know vast reaches, and um didn't understand that if you do one of something that's really at the very beginning of its uh run as an industry, well, you can uh, I guess, become an expert organically. That happened to me. Didn't really plan on this, but I loved it enough that I just followed it, and it's taken me 25 years to where we are now, having done them all that time in hundreds of fields.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so you focus specifically on sport facility engineering, and we're gonna get into that um here just shortly. Who else have you brought with you?

SPEAKER_00:

So I brought uh John Velastro. Um he follows me everywhere I go. No, I'm kidding. We're we're we're good friends. Um he was one of the clients I had um along the the journey. And after he had retired as being a superintendent of schools, he liked what we did enough. He he couldn't stay away from the fun. He wanted to be part of it as well. But I'll let you tell him tell a little bit of that.

SPEAKER_01:

What's your story? Well, I joined the team uh, like I said, shortly after I retired. Um, but I am not an engineer, and that is not my background. Mine is in public education. I was a teacher, coach, uh moved up into administration, um, became an athletic director, and then a superintendent of schools. So the background that I brought was sports. Uh the sports have been a big part of my life ever since I was in high school. Um I was played football, I was on a state championship team. Um 30 years later, I had the opportunity to actually coach in the state championship game, won state championship. And so uh that's my background. But again, the passion for sports has always been there, and I think the reason Jeff kept calling me is I kept sending him people um because I believed in what he was doing. And so again, we struck up a relationship, and here we are for me, seven years later, still working with CEI.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I I think that that is amazing. I love the fact that you have come from education and also as an athletic director, you've got that solid perspective of what they're working with, but it also keeps close to your heart what the purpose of sport facility engineering is, which is to turn out really great um athletes. So let's talk a little bit about how you guys um do that. So, whenever we talk about sport field engineering, what all does that cover?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh about 50 times more than people think. Um, from the day I walked into it, when Abilene ISD walked in the door and said we need an engineer for our field, the the instant reaction was, we're engineers, we don't know that we can really help you. Um, you know, it's not a not our expertise. What what could we possibly do for you? They didn't know either. They just said, Well, we there's a school in Dallas who put two of these in last year, and one of them didn't even make it a year before it was lost. It's already in a lawsuit and being demoed and rebuilt, and we don't want that to happen to us. They said, You make sure our foundation is right, you make sure our drainage is right, let us handle the turf. And I'm like, oh, we can do that. That's what we do. Um, by the time I was done with one project, I was never wanting to do another project again. It was the biggest circus I'd been in, and I'd feel like I'd been kind of manipulated by a lot of the turf companies that uh knew that they knew stuff about the projects and that we didn't, um, and really thought that I would just go back to my normal civil engineering life. Well, the next year, Canyon ISD and Andrew's ISD called, said, You've got to do our engineering as well because we want what Abilene has. I said, No. So I don't want to be involved in that. And then they kind of looked at me funny and I said, you know, unless we can do this differently, I've got to know enough about the whole project, the turf and the drainage and the water and all the components so that it's not kind of this question mark how it's gonna work out. Um, it's gonna take me six months of research, really being able to write a performance spec where I know enough to control the whole project. It's gonna cost a lot of money. And I kind of thought they'd be like, oh, well, never mind that. No, they didn't care. They said, fine, do it. Um, but they were willing to pay some extra money. And once we did that, um, I learned just how much engineering there is in sports. Um, there's as much engineering in a synthetic turf field as there is in anything else in civil engineering. You can go build highways on less technology. And it's also not just because of the nuance of the product, but also how precise everything has to be and then the level of expectation. It's all about expectation. Sports surfacing, everyone expects 100% perfection, you know, everywhere. So it's just made us learn that we have to almost create a form of engineering, which we've done. It's been 25 years of creating what we call sports engineering. Because it wasn't just turf. It started off with turf. Everywhere I went then to talk to a school about a turf and a turf and a turf, I'm kind of looking over like, why is their track falling apart? Everywhere I go, these tracks are crap. They're falling apart. Well, I learned we had like this industry for, I don't know, the 70s, 80s, 90s, um, of a lot of construction going on without any engineering, or virtually no engineering, just contractor goes and does what he normally does and builds what he normally builds, and it ends up like what works or it doesn't. Well, that's not what you want. You want a project and you want it to be custom so that you know it's gonna work. And so, same thing. When someone asked me to do a track project, I had to do that same research. And project after project, we had to learn we've got to take what normally is in the world of construction, what normally is in the world of engineering, and we've got to modify everything. We have to we have to custom fit it so that it actually works with these sports facilities. And so then we've done that from turf over to tracks, and from tracks over to tennis courts, and sports courts and pickleball courts, and you name it. We've we've had to kind of develop an engineering around these these type of projects over the years.

SPEAKER_02:

I do think um there probably is a lot of misconception about the work that would go in, um, the engineering that would go in underneath the field and like what they would really accomplish from that. I think one of the stories that really sticks out to me is a project that you guys did um in uh Texas that um had a severe flood event. Their field went underwater, but because of the way that you guys engineered it, uh that field was back up and operational within about 24 hours. And that um high school facility was able to operate as a community base so that they could get supplies out to the community as they were dealing through that that flood event. I think it's um I think it's so important on it to cities uh as they're building up and they're competing for students um and trying to give uh kids the best opportunity that they can, um I think that increases the competition.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, um to piggyback off of that part of it, uh we were one of those schools uh that had a flood event. Um I think you might be talking about Viter ISD after a hurricane, which is a whole new story or another story. But for us um He was in Lumberton, by the way. I was at Lumber I was at Lumberton ISD and we had all kinds of issues. Um first of all, when Jeff came in, it wasn't just the turf field, but he had mentioned tracks. Well, we had a track that was had cracks in it inch and a half wide, and my background summer jobs was construction. And so I had a little bit of background on how to build things, but the whole key is why is this track falling apart? Something underground must be wrong. Well, that's where I knew that I needed an expert, and his expertise was the base. So we brought him in and we had that conversation about why what can we do to make sure that this thing doesn't separate. I was a track coach for many years, and the in Texas the the big issue was tracks were failing after six months of going down, and people just didn't understand that in Texas the ground moves and it doesn't just move a little bit. You know, a half inch can cause a hundred meter line to look like a wave. And so we we had that issue. But uh so I knew that I had to have a partner in this to guide me, and that's that was a huge thing about Jeff is he he already had the foundation of what's going on with these foundations. And so when we brought him in, then we said, okay, you understand the track, but what about our field? I mean, we go down eight inches, we're hitting water. We got a problem. So it's it's not it's the base, it's the water level, it's how to get water moving, which engineers do quite well. But when you add it when with sports surfaces, you gotta move a lot of water pretty quick. And so the to add to the story is we had about a three-inch rain at 11 30 in the morning, and practice starts at 3 30 in the afternoon. Well, and by one o'clock in the afternoon, I took off my boots and I could walk on the turf field because the rain event lasted for about 45 minutes to hour. It was just a downpour. And within an hour of the rain, I could take off my boots and I could literally walk on the turf without hardly getting my socks wet. That was amazing. So moving water and understanding that uh you have to have a great foundation was everything that we always talk about.

SPEAKER_02:

I think I do think engineering is everything. Um, one of the uh things that I know that can be a real challenge for you guys is oftentimes with school properties, uh people are donating property. It's not always the property that is the most um in the best condition for development. So how have you, or are there any projects that come to mind, Jeff, where you've helped a school like recapture um that property value of that land?

SPEAKER_00:

So this all kind of ties together. Um going back to abbling, just we're gonna handle the water in the soil. Learned that the water in the soil is, you know, everything else is really paint. It's kind of like if we build a car, uh the water in the soil are the metal and everything else. The surfaces are like the paint you put on to make it look pretty. But if the car isn't right, the paint isn't gonna be right. Um so at the same time, we had to go develop a kind of engineering. We had to develop sports engineering. Um, and there really wasn't many resources to go to. Every time I would go to find a resource, I learned it was kind of created by a contractor. And in my opinion, it was kind of cooked in their favor. You know, something that was designed to last long enough. Well, you know, we didn't want anything. We want our clients to have something that's gonna last a hundred years, you know, especially when it comes to like a foundation. Um, and so we had to just little by little, project by project, learning our way through projects. Abilim is probably the seventh or eighth field in the nation. Um, by the time I got, and that was like the year 2000, 2005 comes along, and her train Katrina comes along, floods New Orleans, and Tulane University said, Hey, we need an expert in here. All of our fields have been lost. Um, and I go in, let's get a look at it. And the the standard of design in this whole industry, this cookie cutter that kind of the industry wants to say, let's just go build the same thing everywhere. They put a pond liner down that the 100% impermeable, because the idea is we don't want the rainwater to make it to our soils, getting our soils to be soft and causing all these problems under a field. Well, that's a great idea on half of the problem. It works great if only the water comes from this direction, but it had zero taking into account, well, what if the water comes from underneath? And so in a flood, of course, um the groundwater comes to the surface. By definition, the flooded water will push the groundwater up to the surface and the two come together. And now if you were one of those fields that did a traditional design, um, you're done. You can't ever get that water out from underneath the liner. Happened also in Katrina, um, not Katrina, but also um Harvey across a lot of Houston. Um, so when I was helping Tulane back in 2005, I said, Okay, let's redo your fields, but we can't go back and do them the same way we did them, or we're just gonna have a problem again. And we had to come up with a design that can go underwater, it can breathe, and then when you're done, you clean the field off and the the base when all the drainage is still still be in place. Did that very successfully, did that all across the state of Louisiana for lots of uh universities, some in Arkansas, you know, different places. John came along, I don't know, I guess about 2012, so about seven years later. Um, we'd even handled somewhere there's springs coming up under a water. We were learning project after project what to look for, what to be um cautious of, and whether you've got to use this waterproof design or not. Because again, this costs quite a bit more to make a field waterproof from all directions than it does to only make it waterproof from one direction. But at the same time, I don't want to go building this for everybody because to be honest, eight out of ten people don't need this.

SPEAKER_02:

Don't need that, right.

SPEAKER_00:

You just got to understand. His thing was our water table just naturally happens to be about that far underground. So obviously, if we were to put a big tarp across the ground, that moisture's gonna come up and there was no way to solve it that way. We had to work with them to do the more breathable, waterproof, you know, way of doing it. So again, just project by project, little by little, we've we've developed what we've developed, just finding out what works and what doesn't, and um, and then making sure that we can apply what we need to whatever the clients' needs are. You brought up about recapturing property. It's actually more common with um cities. Okay. Um, where do we build our parks?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

We like to build parks by rivers and lakes. Well, rivers and lakes, just by definition, are almost always in floodplains. So now that a lot of cities want to go and convert their parks over to turf, I'm looking at them like you do realize you're in the floodplain here. Um we can't do the normal design because there's gonna be a year where your fields go underwater and you don't want to lose, totally lose those fields at that time and have to go rebuild them. So yeah, yeah, lots of lots of opportunities to apply the technology to, and I think that's gonna be increasing in the future. Schools I've seen don't build in floodplains too often. They do or they don't. Cities often do, just because of the dynamic of a city and where we where we usually go realign our parks. So um able to help them have those fields they want to have without having to move the whole location and in a way they can feel comfortable that what let the weather do what it will, we we're work, we can get through that without total loss there.

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Ross Powell Well, it sounds like so what what's a typical life? Is is that a fair question to say, is there a typical life of a field?

SPEAKER_00:

That's a great question. This industry has an eight-year warranty on all of the products. Some have 10-year warranties. So that's a really, really good warranty. Um the the misnomer in the industry is, oh my gosh, plastic, beautiful green grass, it's magic. I don't have to do anything to it. I just buy it and I use it all as much as I want for 10 years, and no, that's not true at all. Um, if there's, you know, 10 parts of maintenance for a grass field, well, there's only about, you know, a half of a part of maintenance for a turf field. So it's literally 20 times less maintenance to have a turf field than a grass field, but it's not zero. And very important, everyone has a turf field. Once a year you get your turf company to come re-level the infill. Because what happens to fields that burn out early is the infill flows like water through that plastic. It's granular BBs that move, and as you move it, it moves from the center to the sides. And as your infill in the middle goes down, down, down, well, that's where the bulk of the cleats in the traffic is happening. And once you can have those cleats instead of playing up here on these rubber and staying away from the backing, this gets too thin, those cleats go through, they hit that back, and your turf is and then you're wearing out your turf.

SPEAKER_01:

So you can see where his is very technical. So, from a standpoint as a school official, as a superintendent or principal or athletic director, part of what I do is come in and educate. You know, education is a big part of this. Coaches want to coach, but then they do need to realize that there needs to be some maintenance. And you also need to budget for it. That's another thing schools need to be aware of. If you're gonna have these facilities, yes, there's less overall maintenance, but it's gonna have a cost. So you're gonna have to have some infill uh redone every two years, three years, uh you're gonna have to continually brush it, at least depending on the use. Um because again, you will have general use, plethora of use, and overuse.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Because everybody in that community, from pee-wee football to your use of soccer, to your band, your drill teams, your football teams, not just high school, junior eyes are gonna want to use it, A, B, and C teams are gonna want to use it, and all your sub varsity, and then you go to soccer season. So it's uh a whole lot of use and abuse that can happen. So when I go in and talk to athletic directors, just I try to make them understand there's gonna be a cost, but it's worth taking care of your facilities if you want them to last that eight to ten years.

SPEAKER_02:

So in the beginning, do you agree is that part of the conversation whenever you're talking with um athletic directors or superintendents about extending the life of the field? Um, are you do you talk to them about what their maintenance capabilities are? Does it take special expensive equipment to maintain um a turf appropriately? Like for most high schools, really looking at that level.

SPEAKER_00:

So it depends. Um, small schools with one or two fields, there you're everyone gets provided groomers that are really meant like a vacuum cleaner. They keep the field clean, they keep the fibers looking good, they do not move the infill at all. So this is what some people think is well, I've been grooming my field with the thing they gave me, thinking that's all it needs. And no, that that's keeping it looking good while at the same time your infill is getting thinner and thinner and thinner. It takes your company, your your turf company with much bigger machinery to come and people who know how to use that machinery to get that infill level each year. So yearly re-leveling of infills is really, really important.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, and that should be done by a specialty company that's not running your humor over it.

SPEAKER_00:

These warranties, of course, if I'm the warranty guy, and I I feel for all these partners we work with in turf, because uh they I'm hoping they're probably cheering for me right now. Um, you hire your turf company. So when you go make a relationship with a turf company for your turf, whoever you choose, realize you're making a relationship that's going to last at least the full length of that turf. And you need to be working with them each year to be the ones to come and um do that. That's also tied into the warranty being effective. So, yeah, sometimes people are like, oh, just call Joe down the street. I think he's got one of these things, have him do it. That's a bad idea. It's super trained, super specialized, and also just tied into the warranty that your turf company is the one doing that maintenance. And then together you make sure that field lasts. If you I've seen schools who really do maintenance well, and they've been out to 13, 14, 15 years on a field, or the school down the road who doesn't do any maintenance, they're replacing after seven years. It's you can almost double the length of just by being cautious on the um the maintenance. Now, again, it does get into the degree of use of two. If someone's gonna play on it morning till night and the other guy only plays on it once a day, all those factors come in, but uh maintenance is huge. And we try to coach all these schools. When it comes to the machinery, I've I've got big schools out there that now have 30 turf fields. Well, their budget can afford a hundred thousand or a hundred and fifty thousand dollar piece of equipment that um gives them maybe the ability to go do some of that leveling on their own. But for the most part, uh it's a good idea just to work with your turf company, rely on their expertise to do that for you.

SPEAKER_02:

Is uh really at the end of the day, we're doing this to make sure that we've got safe facilities for our schools and that they've got a chance to really have their best support. They can play like a champion. Um but thinking about those student athletes, um is there a do they have a different experience on an engineer field?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it just depends. So when you're not engineering a field, it just means, okay, um, somebody go going back to the beginning of TERF, uh the the the founder of the TERF, we won't get into names, but the the first company to bring TERF to America was basically controlled by a lawyer, which I'm sure he was a great lawyer, but he wasn't a very good engineer. He's dead now, so I'll talk about him. Um and it was a cookie-cutter approach as well, kind of a like one approach fits all. Well, anyone in the design world knows there's never such a thing as one design fits all. It's actually heinous to kind of think that way. Because yeah, it maybe it does or maybe it doesn't. Well, when I'm spending millions of dollars, I don't really want to be maybe a does or maybe it doesn't. I want for sure for it to work. So everything has to be custom designed to the site, to the, you know, all every every job has to be specifically designed. Well, that takes all the technology of engineering. It takes all the technology of land surveyors, takes all the technology of geotechnical engineers, takes all the technology of civil and sports engineers, it takes all the technology of materials testers, all these things are critical. So now you know, look, I went and spent a million bucks. Yes, I had to spend another 10% to make sure this is gonna last me a hundred years, but is n is trying to save 10% worth a 50-50 flip that maybe you're gonna be spending another million dollars with all the political not fallout that comes with that. Well, of course, you know, nobody wants that.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, you were talking about an experience for the student athletes. And what I'm I see is society is one that's going to um go where I have opportunity. And what we've seen in Texas, even from the smallest school with maybe a hundred kids to the school that has 12,000 kids, uh people are opting to put in these artificial turf fields. The reason is is if my if I don't have something that everybody else has, I'm apt to say, I am willing to pick up and move to a school district that has great facilities or better than I have, so my child will have an opportunity. And I'm we're seeing more and more in Texas that I'll at every level most schools are putting in turf fields, probably because of community pressure. So again, there's the expectation from parents, there's what the students want, they want the opportunity to play on these turf fields, if that's what your question is. And then again, as a community, we want people to stay. So we're willing to pay for these facilities. And we're seeing schools that have 40, 50-year-old facilities all of a sudden investing. And I think that's the key word is investing. You're investing in your facilities so you can invest in your students.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I I missed the question. I got lost in the answer too. You asked how engineering affects students, and I was kind of looking at the more longevity of the project. When it comes to students, um, engineering gets into what am I giving you not today, but for that that 10-year haul. Every field looks really, really good on day one, or no one would ever kind of accept it. Um, you know, a year later, are you getting undulations? This happens to fields. Are you getting places where it's going to kick the ball up in the air where it shouldn't? Are you getting a place where it can actually be an ankle roll or when it shouldn't? There's also questions of just um, is it even kind of designed for the sport? The way you design turf for football is not at all the way you design turf for baseball or softball. Even on a baseball and softball field, the way you design it for the warning track is different than the way you design it for the grass, for the way you designed it for the infield, and the way you designed it for what they call the high traffic areas. There's four different designs that have to go into a baseball and softball field. So if you don't understand all that, you're gonna get a probably a pretty good looking field, but it's not gonna perform the way they want. The students are gonna have to almost be adjusting how they play to play with it. So much different uh experience of just throwing something down or something one design fits all versus something that's more custom. We even sit with coaches, coach by coach on an infield of a baseball field, and it depends on how fast he wants a ball to go. You can make a ball go slower or you can make a ball go faster. Um, on a football field, you can make a field more for speed, or you can make a foot more for you might say the cushion of it. So understanding the school, the coach, the expectation, all this goes into a custom design that ends up resulting in what the kids end up playing on and experiencing.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, uh okay, I love that. That kind of leads to this next question that I have heard a lot of conversation about lately, sort of referencing back, John, to the fact that in some of these smaller school districts, they are using the field across multiple sports. And um, John, I was, or Jeff, I was looking through um a couple of the projects that we had done lately, and I noticed a couple fields that are specifically designed to um to provide a base for multiple sports. And I thought that's a really interesting way to give um the access to those better uh fields, but still serve a wider variety. So let's talk a little bit about some of the challenges that might go into or how you might approach it, because that seemed like a good option even for some of the um schools with younger students.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and smaller schools, budgets being tight. Um, you know, if you look at a new high school, the the big standard of Texas, there's a turf uh stadium football field, there's a turf baseball field, there's a turf softball field, there's a turf practice field, there's an indoor turf facility. Um that's a lot of turf. Yeah, we've come up uh even going back to, I guess this all started in Rockwall when we had a situation where under a bond, they said we're gonna go buy a new property and do a new baseball, softball practice facility. Inflation hits three years later, when they get to that part of the bond, they can't even afford the property anymore. The bond money is not there to do what they originally did. They looked at us and said, Well, are there some other solutions? Looking at their school, they had one practice grass field, but I'm like, well, it's a football field, it's a soccer field. Well, yeah, it's also the band field, it's also the PT, it's also everything else. We just said, well, what if we turf is turf, and what if we design it so it's got the baseball infield and the softball infield and as much as we can? We had some car dealerships and restaurants around it. What if we put nets all the way around it to keep all the balls, really tall nets, 40-foot nets, um, and make it a baseball and softball field practice facility. But because it had so many other prior uses, we'll what it will put the football back in there, we'll put the soccer back in there, the band can still use it, we'll still use it as the discus throwing field. It ended up with five different um things going on. We also worked with the pole company for the nets and the light people. We didn't have room for all this stuff. We had to get creative and say, you, Mr. Light Guy, will you make us a custom one light to fit on this particular pole? And they all said, Yeah, yeah, we can do that. So we ended up with a really cool facility that has nets all the way around it, lights all the way around it, and five different sports that can play night or day. Uh, and it just came out of necessity. Um in doing that, everyone loves it. They all say, oh, we want one of those. We're learning with small schools, same thing. Well, there's they're not gonna get the money for, you know, 20 something million dollars worth of turf. If they can take uh a$2 million fund and go make something that works for baseball, softball, soccer, all these different sports, well, that's what they need. Well, you got to get pretty creative in how you do that. And those are the designs we've been coming up with lately where literally you have competition softball, competition baseball, competition football, and soccer all on one field. Um I think that's what. You saw it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And I think uh these turf companies are through research and design are coming up with different fill um fibers where you can soccer and football they're just close enough to be across where you're not slipping and sliding versus having the grip and all that. So every year we're having to do more and more research on the newer products. And then so those are out there for schools as well. So there's there's a lot of um education that needs to be done. So, because again, as an athletic director, I want my field yesterday and I want to be able to play on it. And but you've got to again educate them on who else is gonna be using this field? What's not best just for you, but for your soccer and everyone else.

SPEAKER_02:

So what adjustments do we need to make to make it appropriate to be a multi sport facility? Um well, I just think that that conversation, I love the fact that you guys are getting really innovative and how you're approaching it, trying to make get the best solution for each um district. So speaking about advances, it does seem like there have been a lot of advances in this market as far as product goes. So what are some of the innovations that you're seeing as far as turf or turf system?

SPEAKER_00:

They they they never end. And we love that part of it. Um it keeps keeps it interesting, you know. Um the original field we did back in Abeling, that turf was, you know, good. It was green, but boy, it had a lot of problems. I I've enjoyed watching these manufacturers come up with, you know, better, better, better, better products. Um, I've had a few clients where I've said, yeah, you didn't get a field for 20 years, but you kind of are lucky. You you missed a lot of the a lot of the high prices and the and the try this the learning curve of the whole industry. Um and so today there's amazing products out there, beautiful products. There's there's something for everything, too. Like I say, you kind of got a lot of products to choose from because there's a lot of different applications. One thing that is right now the most recent that we're excited about is uh we gotta have shade over a field, at least in the South. They just passed new regulations for safety because of heat. Um, if it's a certain heat temperature with the humidity involved, it's kind of technical how they do it, but you have to shut down practice. You can't practice. If there's a lightning bolt, of course, within a certain distance, you can't practice. Lots of schools are saying, we can't have that shut our program down. So there's a lot of indoor practice facilities that everyone loves. Wouldn't we all love a full football field in a in a building like the colleges have? Well, some schools can afford that, some schools never can. So the latest craze started over in tight, it was a tight no Marshall Marshall. Um, let's just put the roof over. Well, we've been doing some of those, more and more of those, very, very popular. But the prices, COVID, whatever, inflation, it even made those be almost prohibitively cost. Um, well, we just network and network, and right now there's newer technologies to skin those buildings um with a with a better looking, I think, and you know, better, better options for having a roof over your head that come at a much lesser price, basically half the price of what these metal buildings have been costing. So that's new, that's brand new, but we're excited with it, and we're about to go start talking to a lot of clients about that. That stuff happens all the time. We don't have the time even know where it's coming from because we're not the ones developing it. We just make sure we keep a good relationship with all the guys who are in the construction side and especially in the manufacturing sides. They come to us. You know, we we have that blessing you might say of we'll get a lot of phone calls, we want to show you this, we want to show you that. And it's fun to go and say, Oh yeah. And a lot of times we'll say to these guys, do you realize what you've just done is actually a better fit over here? And so there's a lot of collaboration that goes into bringing products to market and making more options for schools, more options for kids, more options to make money go further and products go longer and look better and and perform better. So that's a fun part of the job.

SPEAKER_01:

It's it's come a long way because again, once at the beginning, indoor turf was lay down some concrete, put a padding, put turf on top. Sounds good, looks good.

SPEAKER_02:

Carpet.

SPEAKER_01:

Until until you got sweat and you got people getting sick and uh throwing up, and how do you clean it, and and what do you do? Um so the design for even indoor, we build it just like an outdoor, even if it has a roof over it. So water can go through and it can breathe and all that. Another thing Jeff then talking about again.

SPEAKER_00:

There's so many stories. He's referring to 2003, all the the the first let's do a turf indoor facility for a high school, at least that I knew of in the state, came into existence. And because you're new, you don't know what you're doing, and this fantastic facility, great big concrete floor. We made sure the shock pad was in there and the turf is in there. When it's all done, everyone's just as thrilled as could be. But I get a call six months later, uh, Jeff, we had a guy, a kid get sick, and we've he's made a big mess. What do we do? I'm like, oh boy, um, you're gonna have to call the turf company to come cut it open and clean it all up and put it all back together. Well, that's a couple thousand dollars. So the very next one who called up, I just said, Okay, we gotta re gotta rethink this. And at the same time, budgets are always tight. Um, well, how much did we pay for that concrete floor that we actually don't even want? It's hurtful to us. Why don't we do it like we do an outdoor field where you can just flush a lot of water through there like a rainstorm would do? Oh yeah, I don't know. And then by the time we said let's do it, we're also looking like, hey, that's saved, that saved a million dollars. So we just learned, hey, it's custom designing for what we really need benefits in so many ways, because now an indoor facility costs a whole lot less to begin with, and you can clean it up and you can do all the maintenance and all these kind of things. Um and so we just done done them all like that since then.

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Ross Powell So it sounds like um a resource for a school to be able to have somebody come in and really evaluate, not be tied to any particular system, but really be able to get down um into the dart, so to speak, and figure out what is going to be best, what's gonna perform and match up with their maintenance and resources, thought of something that you guys are.

SPEAKER_01:

And we've actually recently, Hayes. Again, I'm a track guy, so when we come talking about track surfaces, uh you got different types of surfaces for track, but we actually are talking about the system underneath the track with um like we do tennis courts. That's a little bit different, and it's pretty new. Cost effective, I think we're looking at that. But if you do it this way, you got a system that will last for Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So he's talking about post-tention concrete, which no one ever thought would be possible for a 400-meter track. Well, one companies learned how to do it. So again, they bring that to us, and there's gonna be places where it's applies and places where it doesn't. Um, but yeah, just an incredible option. Uh like uh an asphalt track base, you're lucky you go get 25, 30 years out of it. Well, of course, post-tension concrete could last 100 years. So just just options. Many, many, many options. Go on back to why would someone come to a consultant? Well, it's just like this. Uh if if I need to, I guess, you know, navigate the oceans, I'm really gonna need a good skipper. I'm not I'm not gonna get in that boat by myself. Pretty sure I won't last a day out there. Go with the wind. Yeah, yeah. Um so all construction is like this. Everything is really an expertise one way or the other. When you're gonna design something, it's super important that you have uh experts at design. Um you don't want someone who's been designing lots of roads to suddenly come in and take on a turf. You don't want someone who's been designing a lot of turfs to come on and take on the road. Um, we all have our disciplines uh to practice in. So 25 years, we've just realized what we wanted to become didn't really exist. Or at least I couldn't find it anywhere. We've had to develop it. There's now a lot of companies that do it, and you know, God bless them. Um we just uh say that we're here as a resource that's been kind of the tip of the spear of this whole, you know, synthetic turf industry. There's a whole lot of firsts that we've had to face as we've done, what, five or six hundred fields over 25 years, whether it's water under a um field in New Orleans, whether it's a field that inflates like a balloon, which we haven't talked about, but it can happen. And it's such an easy fix to keep that from happening if you know what you're doing. Um to you want something that's yeah, not gonna just be good for 10 years and start showing the cracks in 15 and you have to rebuild. So, so many examples that you really have to know what you're doing, you really have to um know what applies and what doesn't. You got to know what to do and what not to do, which is only gained by experience. I to this day wish there was some college because we're now hired, we now hire people to work in our department.

SPEAKER_02:

And train, yeah, train them up.

SPEAKER_00:

I so wish there was a sports engineering college that taught everybody this that we could just hire. It doesn't exist. We have to go find the best civil engineer, come in wherever they do it, and we just understand it's gonna take us two or so, it's gonna take us years to to teach them all that they need to learn. Um and I guess that just speaks to the fact that, yeah, there is a lot involved in the being an expert in this industry that we that we offer people.

SPEAKER_02:

I um I've got just a couple more uh questions as we kind of are getting to the end of it. This first one is for you, John. Um when you are talking to a superintendent, what are some of the things, what's some of the advice that you would give that superintendent if they are starting down this path or considering down this path?

SPEAKER_01:

Be careful. Um because as a superintendent uh you're pushing politics. Uh you're responsible to the board members who are responsible to their community. And so as a superintendent, if you're gonna start going down this road, um one, do you have the support for this project or type of project? Um do your research. Because again, if the neighboring school has this facilities, which they probably do because that's why you're looking at it, know that what it's done over here is beautiful and it may work, may not work for you. It may cost more because of your soil and your situation and your la if you're landlocked or not, um you're permitting within your city. There's so many things you need to really do your research. And so then you bring an expert in like Jeff, uh, that has that kind of background. So again, do you have support for it? Do your research.

SPEAKER_02:

And then um make sure you get a consultant you can trust.

SPEAKER_01:

Make sure you get a consultant you can trust, and um don't just listen to your athletic director. And I I say that in jest as an athletic director. As an athletic director, because your athletic directors are talking to people who have a field, a turf bill, and they've been sold a bill of goods. A lot of times it's really good, but sometimes it again it may not be best for you. So be open to because there are several good contractors out there, and they can all do a good job. Um, but again, what's best for you? Yeah, your sister. Yeah, because you know, it is about um being responsible for the um taxpayer's dollars. And a field might cost you, say, a million and a half. But if you're not careful and you spend two and a half, then you're people are gonna start questioning why. And you need to have those answers. Again, that goes back to doing the research.

SPEAKER_00:

So my advice to every school would be do not treat your sports facility project differently than all your other projects. And that's the number one mistake I see school after school after school making. Sports is more fun, it's more interesting, people are more involved, uh, it's it's kind of the buzz type of a project. And I always say, well, that would be the one project you for sure then do not want to cut any corners on. Because if it goes wrong, it's the talk of the town, you know, it's the it's the coffee shop discussion every morning of what's going on on that project. Um and just, yeah, if you're gonna build a high school with a certain set of steps, well, guess what? Those exact same steps actually apply to the field, to the track, to the tennis course, to the to the other parts of your campus of what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01:

And I would also tell the superintendents, there's plenty of um news clippings out there that says, hey, this school started, opened their field, and six months later, or even in mid-season, it's shifted and they've got wavy lines or they've got issues and they can't finish the season on it. Uh do the research on what systems out there are are working and not working. I always say, you know, I every AD and every community loves to see a beautiful field with the graphics and the design, and I always tell the superintendents, get that consultant. It's because it may look pretty on top, but if you you haven't taken care of what's underneath, it doesn't matter. So I always tell the superintendents, and again, I keep saying as a as an educator, um a lot of superintendents are not being proactive. They're being reactive because of the pressure that they're getting. Get this done, get this done, get this done. Fine, get it done. But take a step back and make sure that you have an expert on your team, be it Jeff Rizzy or somebody else that has experience, have that person on your team. Too many schools are skipping that and they're paying the price.

SPEAKER_02:

That sounds like solid advice. I so much appreciate what you guys do. I love the work that you turn out. Um, I I follow a lot along the stories of the schools where you're serving. I see the before and after pictures, and I am really, really proud of the work that you guys turn out. Thank you so much for your time today. Um, I hope that this has been engaging for our listeners. If there's some way that we can help you in the future with your sport field engineering needs, uh please reach out to us at ceieng.com or and look at our website for additional details and contact information. Hope you guys have a great day.