Daily News

The payoff from Western Kentucky’s 41-3 football loss at Kentucky in September is being put to use.

This spring, high school athletes in Albemarle County Public Schools (NC) will receive a belated Christmas gift from an anonymous donor and county supervisors: state of the art synthetic field turf for the football fields. Thousands of students will walk, run and fall on that surface while playing football, field hockey, soccer or lacrosse. Though each field costs $600,000, maintenance will be a heck of a lot easier, and their durability will allow the broader community to play on the fields when they aren’t in use for high school games. But are these new fields really a gift—or a curse? In order to save maintenance money in the short term, Albemarle County is taking a gamble on a new product that may (or may not) have health risks.

Sequoia Union High School District announced that the baseball field at Sequoia High School has been selected as the site of a major field renovation on Jan. 19 as part of the events surrounding the 2009 Major League Baseball (MLB) Groundskeepers Conference in San Jose, Calif., Jan. 17-19.

Two Connecticut legislators are proposing separate pieces of legislation to establish moratoriums on new installations of synthetic turf sports fields.

Pine-Richland's stadium has been used so much since it opened in 2001 that its artificial turf is wearing out.

Westchester County (NY) residents will soon have more great places to play the sports they love thanks to a new agreement between the county and the City of Yonkers to improve two old ballfield sites and put an under-used parking lot to good use.

Cornell Cooperative Extension of the Capital District will be holding a "Turfgrass Worker Training" on January 27, 28, 29 and 30, 2009.

A Task Group of the 2008 Information Outreach Committee completed its work to update the STMA publication, A Guide to Synthetic and Natural Turfgrass for Sports Fields.