After rain delay, turf finally going down at Noyes Field

By MATT PIKE

St. Joseph Post

It was a longer than desired delay, but the Noyes Field at Central High School in St. Joseph is finally getting new turf.

St. Joseph School District Director of Operations, Casey Housman, says rainy summer weather forced delays, with upwards of three inches falling at times.

Housman says after the rain fell, they would have to let everything dry out.

“What that did over time is we had so much rain the subgrade underneath is a lot of expansive clay, that expansive clay would absorb that wall and really just cause a lot of soft spots on the fields,” Housman tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “So once we’d get things ready they would go in for their third part inspections and make sure everything is stable for the turf, and then they would find a spot that would be to soft, and then they would have to excavate that out and start over.”

Housman says this happened two or three times and by that point scheduling became an issue.

Turf is being laid now at Central. Housman, says with workers have been working overtime to complete the project at Central. . .

“It’s laid from about the endzone line to about approximatly I’d say the 40 yard line on the other side,” Hausman explains. “That process there is probably the quickest process out of the whole thing that goes down, the longest process that we have is when you start and you have to sew in all the letters, some are sewn, some are glued in, and then you have to do the numbers, every hash mark.”

Housman says everything has to be laid by hand, which is time-consuming. It could 14 to 17 days to complete.

The project is part of improvements being made to all the St. Joseph schools after voters approved a bond issue. Benton, Lafayette, and Central will all transition from natural grass fields to turf.

Housman, says once Noyes is complete, each school will have a new modern looking field

“So we’re excited about that, and that was one of the things that we wanted to be different,” Hausman says. “We wanted a site that you show up to and then five years from now they’re going to be like, man you remember playing at that St. Joe site? Those fields were amazing. That’s the effect that we want, we weant people to be happy to go to the fields and be proud of what they have now because they are very nice.”

Housman says just one other school in Missouri has the gray turf on it like the ones at the three schools.

Central will play its first home game against Benton next week at Missouri Western. Housman, though, expects the field to be completed before the September 19th home game against North Kansas City.

You can follow Matt on X @KfeqMatt and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.