By Scott Mammoser
The football team is fed up.
The playing conditions at Coyer Field on the campus of Buffalo State College are becoming a nuisance, due to mud and overuse of the grass field.
“The start (of the season) is pretty good, but the end of the season is terrible,” said Jack Mrozinski, a junior quarterback for BSC. “I think it’s just a combination of the weather and the games.”
Mrozinski said the worst part of the field was the area around the 50-yard line near the press box.
“There would be no grass,” he said. “It would all be mud and sawdust. My foot would go like a half an inch into the grass.”
A field for all seasons
It’s extra difficult at BSC because in the fall, the football and both the men’s and women’s soccer teams use Coyer Field. In the spring, the women’s lacrosse program is the sole occupier.
“It’s very different for us because we’re the only sport out there in the spring,” said Meg
Stevens, the head lacrosse coach. “We’re all on the same boat. I do have confidence that
our athletic director is going to improve it. That’s ust where the boss has to do the best thing for the student-athletes.”
The answer to the problem might be a new field surface.
Other reasons for a new surface
The preferred surface is FieldTurf, which is an artificial surface designed to look and feel like real grass. It has replaced the old, hard AstroTurf as the common artificial surface at
modern stadiums.
“If we had FieldTurf here, it would be a huge revenue builder,” Mrozinski said.
The field could be rented out to the Buffalo Public Schools, and other events could be
held there.
The poor field may also hurt the team’s chances of recruiting top talent.
“Say a kid wants to go here or Cortland,” Mrozinski said. “He’ll pick Cortland because
of the field.”
The team would lose a recruit because of this, Mrozinski said.
In 2002, Cortland opened an $18 million state-of-the-art sports complex with two
Spinturf fields. Spinturf, a Bethesda, Md., based company, uses 32,000 recycled tires to create a single playing field. It is basically the same product as FieldTurf.
The future of Coyer Field
Jerry Boyes, the BSC athletic director, traveled to Albany in late March to petition for a new $4 million, 5,000-seat stadium.
“This is a big step, and now many other people need to get into the project,” Boyes said. “We have a few steps in front of us. This is driven by Legislature. You can never put a date on there. That’s part of the vision right now.”
A new stadium may be built over the existing field or across Grant Street.
“To have it still on campus is something I look forward to,” Boyes said.
Boyes, who said the field has been a problem since he arrived at BSC in 1986, likes the existing location because it’s easily accessed from the campus and attached to other facilities, such as the ice rink and basketball arena.
He also said artificial turf added to Coyer Field would cost between $700,000 and $1 million.
“The biggest problem compared to the SUNYAC (State University of New York Athletic Conference) is that we have one field and every other school has multi fields,” Boyes said. “We’re the only one that has four varsity sports that use one field. We’re two decades behind everybody else.”
There is also a water drain owned by the city of Buffalo that runs diagonally through the current Coyer Field. It is a major supplier of BSC’s water. Boyes said replacing it would cost between $600,000 and $700,000.
Examples of stadiums that switched from grass to FieldTurf:
- Giants Stadium (East Rutherford, N.J.) 2003
- Paul Brown Stadium (Cincinnati) 2004
- Michigan Stadium (Ann Arbor, Mich.) 2003
- Rice-Eccles Stadium (Salt Lake City, Utah) 2002
San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson has a testimonial on
fieldturf.com, from after a November 2005 game at Giants Stadium.
“That’s my type of field,” he said. “I love to play on fields like that. I have the advantage
when I’m able to play on that surface.”
Contact Scott Mammoser: mailto:Scotty8882@cs.com.
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