Tigers regular season may be done before football field

It's doubtful the football field will be completed by the Douglas High School homecoming scheduled for Oct. 26.

"At this point, I'm not trying to be negative, but I don't think the track's going to happen," said Director of Business Services Holly Luna at Tuesday's Douglas County School Board meeting.

"A lot of people have seen no work, no people, and what they don't realize is that they can't see the delay of equipment," she said.

Grading was completed Oct. 7 and turf is delivered, but work is delayed because the wrong size of the "gooseneck" parts of the goal posts were delivered.

"We're on hold because of the delivery of the wrong posts and they're trying to work around it," she said.

Luna said they don't want to invalidate the manufacturer's warranty on the equipment by doing the work themselves to cut the posts to the correct size.

"Sportexe said they have a 7 day/12 hour work schedule, and according to my calculations, it could be completed by Oct. 24 but probably not by homecoming," she said.

"We'd like to say we're complete by Oct. 24 but we won't commit to that."

The weather plays a big part in whether the artificial field turf will be installed on the football field. Luna said a hard rain like the one that occurred Tuesday would impede completion.

The construction company prefers temperatures of 40 degrees and above without consistent hard freezes at night. Dry weather is critical.

"If it continues to rain, we won't have turf," Luna said. "We would lay some sort of surface over the track and over the turf."

Construction started in June on the all-weather sports complex named Big George Athletic Complex in honor of Ray Sidney, owner of Big George Ventures, who donated $2 million for the project. The date of completion was originally at Sept. 1 and was later postponed until Oct. 6.