SUNY Morrisville athletic director Matt Grawrock this week took time to defend his school's decision to install a black turf field after reports of the unusual playing surface made national news.
Grawock told the Concho Valley that the turf was made as part of a discussion around rebranding ideas for the college.
“We were going through a rebrand and we are one of 19 SUNY schools that has green as a major color, so we felt that we needed to move towards a different direction from a rebranding standpoint,” Grawrock said. “We’ve embraced more of black and white as primary colors and as we went through the process, we saw this unique opportunity, on top of a new logo, to have a look for a field that is not very prevalent. I know that few high schools have it in the country, so we said why not do it?”
Related: Division III School Unveils Black Synthetic Turf Football Field
Grawock said he's pleased with the results.
“So now we have a field that’s phenomenal to look at," he said, "and we’re just really excited about having it in place for this upcoming season."
One criticism that has surfaced online, especially as extreme heat grips most of the country, is that a black turf field will be unnecessarily hot, but Grawock said the temperature difference between a black field and one of another color is negligible.
“Synthetic turf is hot no matter what, and we knew that, so we weren’t quite sure how much hotter,” he said. “We looked at a study that was done by Penn State across a couple different facets of synthetic turf, and we found that it’s at most two to three degrees hotter than a green field with similar infield.”
An official ribbon-cutting ceremony is planned in the coming weeks.
