Jim Thorpe says yes to $1.7M turf field

A roar of applause filled the Jim Thorpe Area High School at Wednesday night’s school board meeting as the school board voted 6-3 in favor of installing a new artificial turf field at Jim Thorpe’s Olympian Stadium.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said board member TJ Garritano, chairman of the athletic committee. “As many area residents know, our field is constantly bogged down with water with poor draining. It limits our athletes from playing on the field.”

Poor drainage of the field has been a problem for many years. In fact, the field was deemed entirely unplayable in both 2009 and 2011.

“Essentially we have around 72 events that need to be played on the athletic field,” Garritano said. “Our current situation, we only have nine of those events on the field. The remaining events are scattered around the district, or we move them to away games.”

Wednesday’s public hearing portion of the meeting featured concerned taxpayers on both sides of the 50-yard line, who voiced their opinions in regard to the new turf.

Would taxes rise? According to the board, the answer is a firm no. Multiple board members expressed that the funds area available without having to increase taxes at all.

Additionally, two corporate sponsors are in the mix to significantly help with the cost. The board will choose a package from either St. Luke’s or Lehigh Valley Health Network, which includes more than just money for the turf. However, Garritano said the time to act is now, as the corporate sponsorship of over $500,000 is not guaranteed to be available in the future.

“The services they’re giving us in a 12-year period comes out to believe it or not, $3.1 million dollars,” said board member Paul Montemuro.

“The kids will be trained how to eat properly, how to do physical workouts. There will be someone training kids just for football, just for track, just for volleyball (etc.).”

Keystone Sports Construction is tentatively scheduled to start the $1.74 million project in June. According to Garritano, installation will take 50 days at seven days per week. The plan is for the field to be ready for the opening of the fall season, which is a home football game with Blue Mountain on Aug. 28. With a field available year-round, there are plenty of unique avenues to bring in revenue.

“I want the public to understand it’s not just a field for football. It’s about bringing the community together for all of our different events,” said Montemuro.

“For example, it’s the concession stand; we only ran nine events the whole season. How much money we lost that cost the taxpayer more money? Anywhere we can save the taxpayer money and help relieve the pressure off them. … That’s why I’m for the field; it encompasses everything. It’s an all-around great project. They kicked the can too many times down the road. It’s going to run another $500,000 next year if they wait again. It’s not going to get cheaper.”

The new turf, however, won’t be a traditional green color.

Just like Boise State’s signature blue turf, the Olympians will sport their own signature color red — giving more meaning to the storied “Red Swarm” nickname. “I believe we’re the best school in Carbon County; athletics and academics,” said Garritano. “Why not have our signature red on the field to stand out?”

According to the board, the district pours in roughly an annual $54,000 to maintain the current and nearly unusable natural grass field at Olympian Stadium; all of which is capable of holding just nine events each year.

A few board members weren’t initially on board with the idea of a new turf field when it was presented in the past, but eventually decided it was the best move for the community.

“As a board member for three months now, we’ve spent an awful lot of time speaking about sports and I would really like, as well as a lot of other people out here, to see us moving to the education factor. However, there are some things that have really swayed me here,” said Cindy Lesisko-Henning.

“One is the field needs to be replaced; it’s underutilized because it is a hazard. Secondly, through meetings with our business interim business manager, it has been pretty clear to me that we can do this with fiscal responsibility and not bear any additional expense to our tax base and that was very important to me.”

Voting against the field were Dennis McGinley, Glenn Confer and Raniero Marciante.

The March 2 meeting should provide more in depth details of what’s on the horizon at Jim Thorpe Area High School.

“It’s not just a football field,” said superintendent John Rushefski. “We want the 2,500 students in Jim Thorpe to interact on the field at some point in the year.”