Is Kingston turf dangerous?

It was Cedar Rapids Jefferson's Tyler Evans in Week 2, Royce Bell of Cedar Rapids Kennedy in Week 4 and Cedar Rapids Washington's Shay Gutman in Week 6.None of the three schools that call Kingston Stadium home during the high school football season were spared significant knee injuries to important players last season. Evans and Bell were two of the top running backs around and Gutman a versatile quarterback.All had damaged ACLs that required surgery. Only Gutman was able to continue playing.It should be pointed out FieldTurf was installed to replace natural grass at Kingston for the first time last season. To be fair, Gutman suffered his initial knee injury at Linn-Mar on natural grass.But the other two got hurt in games at Kingston. Coincidence or correlation?"We had five knee injuries last season. A couple of them were kind of mysteries," said Jefferson Coach Jim Womochil. "I kind of wondered ... I don't want to blame it on the turf. For instance, we had a kid get hurt on our practice field by stepping in a hole."I still prefer FieldTurf. There is a significant decline of knee injuries as opposed to the old AstroTurf."FieldTurf is the wave of the present in football. Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City has it, Coe College has it, Kingston got it as part of a $2.7-million stadium renovation.Instead of a chewed up, muddy mess by the fifth week of the season, the three public Metro schools enjoyed playing in optimal conditions all season. And not just those teams.Sophomore squads, freshman squads, junior high squads all played in Kingston. Heavy rains deluged Linn-Mar's Armstrong Field early last season but Kingston was available for its opener.Then there are the multitude of soccer games played on the FieldTurf last spring."I guess one point I would like to make about the use of the field is that while we had a 150-percent increase in fall activities and a 400-percent increase in spring activities last year, I'm not aware of any more injuries than we would have had in previous years when we just had 14 football dates and no soccer in the spring," said Matt Dunbar, associate director of human resources for the Cedar Rapids Community School District. Dunbar was instrumental in turning Kingston into a FieldTurf stadium."Again, there are no statistics to support one way or another," Dunbar said. "It's just my observations with feedback from players, coaches, and AD's."Washington Athletics Director Paul James said there are always going to be knee injuries in football and wonders if the higher-profile kids who incurred them last season made things seem worse than they really were."I know there were a few. It just so happened to be some big names," said James, who was a longtime head and assistant football coach at the school. "I can remember my second season at Washington. We had high expectations, we'd just made the playoffs. We had 17  knee injuries that year. It seems to me that six required surgery."So I don't know. I didn't notice so much a rash of those types of injuries last season. Maybe just because they were to running backs and quarterbacks, it was more noticeable."James and Washington head coach Tony Lombardi said they like the playing surface at Kingston because of its "multi-use" potential. James pointed out the first Saturday of the football season last year there were three games on it in the morning, band practices in the afternoon and two more games that night."For me, I love the turf," Lombardi said. "With a municipal stadium like this, with all the use, you almost have to have it. I remember a couple of years ago we had a pretty good team. We played Bettendorf (in the playoff quarterfinals) and it a cold and miserable night and there was no grass left on the field. I remember thinking to myself at the time 'What a shame.'"Dunbar pointed out how much softer the surface is than traditional AstroTurf, saying there didn't seem to be as many broken bones or fractures as in season's past. He also pointed out Bell's knee injury came when he was hit from behind. Womochil said Evans got hurt when he was hit directly on his knee while also carrying an opponent on his back.Maybe this really is all about nothing. We'll see how this season goes.