[Texas Aggie]

...then, make the sand become mud. That describes about 40% of our field in last night's game. The rest ranged from soft (40%) to wet (10%) to reasonably dry (10%). Interestingly, it turned out to be a good game -- my crew's second good game of the year. The other one was in heavy rain on a wet, swampy field. Yesterday it didn't rain and was sunny and somewhat windy for most of the day, but not enough to dry that pasture out.

We did the best we could to ignore the conditions, but my umpire had a difficult time spotting the ball with absolutely no yard lines in the middle of the field. I (R) and the BJ essentially had to "set up" before the play and map out where we were going to go. There was no sense in going through the heavy mud as we would sink and probably stay there indefinitely! I lined up many plays directly behind the QB and on many other plays directly behind the slot receiver!

The weather throughout most of Texas this fall has been brutal. Rain has soaked everyone and no grass fields have come through unscathed. 30 year veterans are telling me they've never seen anything like it -- numerous cancellations due to weather (lightning, mostly), game time and location changes to play on different fields, and bad weather games that get played. I think its time for even the smallest school districts to take a hard look at synthetic fields. There's a big down payment, but maintenance costs are less and there will be no worries about 1) getting the games in and 2) where to play the subvarsity games the night before the varsity games.