This season marks the first season for Parkland’s fall sports teams on the new turf field. While none of the teams have played a regular season game on the field, the early returns from preseason workouts and scrimmages have been positive.

Perhaps the biggest plus that coaches have reported is having pretty much eliminated ankle injuries from players stepping on uneven areas of the old grass field.

“I am definitely noticing a difference,” said assistant field hockey coach Kristen Shickora. “It’s a beautiful field and we have a lot less injuries because of it. The grass fields that we played on before were nice and they made them as good as they could be, but you can’t help Mother Nature, so we’ve seen less injuries because of it and we’re obviously happy about that.”

Girls soccer coach Al Haddad, who is entering his 11th season as the team’s coach, said that this is the first year he remembers not having any turned ankles.

“It’s beautiful,” said Haddad. “It’s hot. Our feet were burning during the hot days of August. The ball rolls true. There’s a very slight grade and it’s quick, the ball moves quick, so that’s nice.”

The boys soccer team also hasn’t had any ankle injuries, although coach Patrick Birns’ team is dealing with some other nagging injuries not caused by the turf.

With multiple teams sharing the facility, scheduling has been tougher this summer, as teams looked to get in practice time and adjust to the new field. As Haddad mentioned, some teams still get bumped to a grass field at times for practice because the facility is being used for multiple sports. For his part, Birns is happy with the new facility and thinks it will benefit his team.

“It’s nice,” he said. “Being selfish, it was a lot easier when it was just two teams to share from and now, there’s three and in the offseason there’s a lot. But we’ve always been a pretty high technical team, and we were a turf team playing on grass, really. Now, to have this, it’s nice.”

The coaches all agree that the new turf will change the way their teams play the game and that their players have had to make adjustments to their game.

Other schools have had turf fields, so players and coaches aren’t unfamiliar with playing on the artificial surface, but they’ll now have all of their home games played on turf.

“They recognize that their speed of play now really has the ability to raise and it affects them in that their level of execution has to be sharper, because the ball comes on you quicker,” Haddad said. “We had a practice on the grass field, because of conflicts and they were like ‘how did we do this last year?’”

“The ball moves much faster on turf and it can work against you if you’re weak or sloppy with passing,” said Shickora. “It’s just those little things that we’re working on.”

Just as Parkland had to adjust its game in the past when it played at schools that had turf, the Trojans now have to make adjustments when they play at schools that still have grass fields. The coaches believe that will be easier for them to do than it will be for teams who play their home games on grass and have to adjust to turf.

“That’s going to be interesting too,” said Haddad about having to go back to playing some games on grass. “We have Easton. We have Central. There are games where we are going to be on grass that we have to prepare for.”

Haddad said his team will schedule some time on the grass facility at Parkland in preparation for those games.

“It’s a lot easier to play on turf, but that doesn’t make it any easier when you’re playing another team, who also has turf,” said Shickora. “We’ll see how this season goes as far as having home games on turf, and hopefully, it works to our advantage.”

One change is that the district will now charge admission to soccer and field hockey games, just as it did for lacrosse in the spring.

Admission for adults will be $5 and students $3. Senior citizens, active military and veterans are admitted free. The money raised from the admissions will be set aside to pay for needed repairs to the field, which aren’t expected to be necessary for 10 to 15 years, but can be quite costly.