It’s just yard work

The job of a football coach extends far beyond what meets the eye.

Of course, there is the practices and games which everyone sees. There are also the workouts and hours of studying film. Another thing added to that list of duties is keeping their respective football fields in playing shape.

Keeping up with a football field is not as easy as one may think. Most coaches spend between six to 15 hours per week working on their fields.

“It is a yearly schedule,” explained Erath coach Jacob Byler. “You can’t wait to get it ready. We like to get it nice and soft. We want something the kids enjoy playing on. It is durable, too. If we play in the rain we can patch it up and play on it again the next week.”

Byler is in his first summer of not keeping up with the field himself. He still has a hand in everything that goes on, but has passed on those duties to another person. According to Byler, they cut the Erath football field nearly every other day. They also water the field a few times a week, depending on the weather. Keeping the weeds off of the field is a major goal for coaches during the summer months.

“At this time of the year there is a lot more weed maintenance going on,” stated Kaplan head coach Brent Indest. “Right now is the time that you want to get the weeds out of the way.”

A lot of the stress has been taken off of Delcambre head coach Darcy Delcambre because of the newly installed sprinkler system.

“We are very fortunate to have a sprinkler system put in this year,” admitted Delcambre. “Before that we had to put sprinklers on the field and move them around every two or three hours throughout the day.”

All of the cutting, watering, fertilizing, among other things is done now so that the field can be in tip-top shape in the fall for football season.

Things haven’t been normal in Kaplan for Indest on his football field. He normally does all of the work on the field, but can’t this summer due to the track being built around the football field.

“It is a little different this summer because of the track,” said Indest. “I normally keep up with it myself, but because it would be almost impossible to get our real mower on the game field because of the construction, our janitor is doing it.”

Another major reason coaches put so much effort into making their fields look great is for the athletes that play on it on Friday nights. All the care that goes into the field during the summer months keep athletes safe on the field during the season.

“There are the tangible advantages such as maintaining good drainage for rainy Fridays and keeping it smooth so no one slips or gets hurt stepping in ruts,” said Vermilion Catholic coach Brad Topham on why he does so much hard work to take care of the field right now. “But there is also an intangible assets to a great looking field, pride. We want our kids to have an attitude about how they play on their own field. We want our players to have something they can appreciate like a nice turf.”

It is not a fun or easy job, but the hard work certainly pays off on Friday nights whenever the athletes step onto the field for battle.