FieldTurf at Kinnick, Kingston drawing rave reviews, lots of use

Two weeks ago today, it rained. Rained hard. Rained a lot. On top of a lot of rain the day before.

Two weeks ago today, Kingston Stadium had its first high school football game of the year, Xavier against Jefferson. Had its natural-grass field still been in place, it would have been a torn-up, muddy mess that night and would probably have stayed torn up all season.

Brian Kramer of Cedar Rapids was in the top row of the Kingston grandstand that night. He didn't have a rooting interest.

“I just sat and enjoyed,” he said.

Kramer is a regional sales manager for FieldTurf, the synthetic turf installed in Kingston this year. He's a Cedar Rapids native who played football on the Kingston sod before graduating from Kennedy High in 1980.

He played in the University of Nebraska's football program, was a graduate assistant coach at Texas A&M, and was an associate athletics director at William Jewell College near Kansas City for 14 years. He moved back to Cedar Rapids in 2004.

Kramer was a point man in not only selling Cedar Rapids on FieldTurf, but the University of Iowa.

Coe College's Clark Field and a new stadium at Clear Creek Amana High School also use the product.

Kinnick Stadium's turf was used for the first time last Saturday.

“I'm more excited about Kingston than Kinnick,” Kramer said. “To have played high school football there and be able to go back there and know it's got a great surface, that's why it was such an important project for me emotionally.”

Kingston hosted five football games and a band practice Aug. 29. The FieldTurf, part of a $2.7 million renovation project at the stadium that also included lighting and restrooms, quickly began making a difference.

“Matt Dunbar (associate director of human resources for Cedar Rapids Community Schools) is the backbone who put this together,” Kramer said. “He's looking like a genius.

“You could see 200-plus games a year there. The soccer community will realize what a great venue we've got here for soccer, and 150 soccer games a year at Kingston could become a reality.”

FieldTurf is at most NFL stadiums. Kramer said every Big Ten school uses it in the stadium or for practice fields. It combines fibers with a sand-and-rubber mixture to mimic a real grass field.

“You can wear cleats just like you would on a natural field,” Kramer said. “The mechanical properties are the same as a native-grass field.”

Said Iowa football coach Kirk Ferentz: “It's kind of the wave of the future, I guess.”

The wave of the present is more accurate.

-- Mike Hlas