When the turf gets going: What is out there for people interested in resurfacing their fields.

As the high school beat writer for the New York Post, Dan Martin trudges from sandlots to bandboxes reporting the accomplishments of the city's athletes. Last year, Martin went to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy on Long Island for a high school football playoff game and was surprised by what he found.

"It wasn't until I was standing on the field that I realized it wasn't natural grass," Martin said.

The Academy field was FieldTurf, a product that is part of a new wave in synthetic turf. The new technology replaces the old carpet and with two inches of rubber and sand filler, which holds the three-inch synthetic fibers in place.

The old synthetic fields had much shorter fibers, with little or no filler, creating the kind of playing surface that felt closer to concrete than bluegrass. Sand filler became popular in the late 1980's, but the sand would compact quickly and created a surface that was incredibly hard and had no drainage.

FieldTurf, made in Montreal, and AstroPlay, made in Leander, TX by Southwest Recreational Industries, are the leaders in the new synthetic turf market. Southwest created AstroTurf, the first major synthetic surface, before shifting to the friendlier and cheaper AstroPlay in recent years.

The new fields are softer and don't tear off skin or grab at knees the way the old fields did. They look and feel almost like the real thing (grass);

Both products cost about the same (around $750,000) and both are major improvements over the old surfaces.

The difficult part is distinguishing one from the other. Neither surface has been around long enough to determine the kind of problems that come with five to ten years of use. In fact, even when new, it's difficult to determine which surface is superior.

San Diego's two major high schools installed new synthetic turf fields within the last two years. La Jolla H.S. chose FieldTurf and San Diego H.S. installed AstroPlay. Both schools claim superiority.

"Ours (AstroPlay) is more like real grass," declares San Diego H.S. girls soccer coach Carlos Ugarte. "When we played at La Jolla, the girls seemed to slip more and the field seemed harder."

Rick Eveleth, the AD at La Jolla, feels that he made the right choice with FieldTurf.

"It's exactly like true grass. It has been great for our high school.

"Our kids believe that the AstroPlay surface at SOHS was much slower. It was like running in heavy sand."

Coaches and ADs all over the country echo the sentiments of Eveleth and Ugarte. All of those interviewed praised the product they installed and insisted it was superior to the competition's.

The major difference between FieldTurf and Astro Play lies in the filler. FieldTurf uses a mixture of sand and rubber taken from recycled Nike sneakers. AstroPlay uses rubber from old tires, but most of their fields have no sand. They rely on a system of short nylon fibers to keep the rubber in place.

Southwest asserts that the material in its AstroPlay fields will compact over time and say that FieldTurf does not take this into account.

The danger, Southwest says, is that the sand will compress and the rubber will migrate to the sides, creating a harder surface that could cause head injuries.

Chief operating officer Jim Savoka warns that "the one thing you have to worry about as a coach, an athletic director, or a parent is shock absorbency. The head and neck injuries are the ones you don't recover from.

"The sand in these fields gets compacted and if you don't have a pad, you may have to pay the price in head injuries. There are people who are saying that this is just AstroTurf talk. Baloney! These are U.S. safety standards and they are not up for interpretation."

As a result, Savoka says, Southwest installs a pad underneath some of their fields to ensure their standards.

Northwest sales rep Jim Mendenhall offers FieldTurf's rebuttal.

"AstroPlay needs a pad," he says, "because it is all rubber and it travels. Since our infill doesn't migrate, you don't need a pad with FieldTurf."

However, FieldTurf ran into trouble last summer when play on two of its fields in Oregon, one at Lake Oswego H.S. and a practice field at a neighboring school, was suspended because they failed shock absorbency tests.

But the fields were ready for the start of football season and there were no head injuries either before or after the suspension. Locals were skeptical of any problems to begin with.

"We felt it was safe to play on the whole time," Lake Oswego AD Brian Heinze says. "I still think it's an amazing surface."

Meanwhile, Southwest has had its own problems. It found itself at the center of the most famous NFL preseason game in history on August 13, 2001, when the Philadelphia Eagles were forced to cancel a game due to the condition of its field (in Veterans Stadium).

The culprit was Southwest's high-end product, NextTurf (a version of AstroPlay), and it is duly noted on the FieldTurf website.

But the problem in Philadelphia was caused by the conversion of the stadium from baseball to football. More specifically, there was a problem with the drainage in the areas where the NextTurf covered the baseball base cutouts. This type of con version is something few high schools will have to worry about and the product in question is not targeted at high schools.

The two companies have even slugged it out in court, with AstroPlay winning a $1 million settlement over claims made by FieldTurf. Again, the suit did little to settle the question of which product was better for high schools.

Of course, grass is still available. And it might not be as costly as you think.

According to Steve Abella, sports turf manager of Delta Bluegrass in Stockton, CA, grass can be less expensive than synthetic turf, even when you factor in maintenance costs.

Abella believes that he can install a Bermuda grass field for around $30,000 and that it will require around $8,000 annually for annual maintenance.

That makes the grass much less expensive than turf ($800K), when you figure that with proper maintanence a grass field will last much longer than the 8-10 years a synthetic turf field is estimated to last.

"Some of the synthetic surfaces are nice to play on, and most places can come up with $800,000 initially," Abella says. "But can they come up with that kind of money again in eight years when they have to replace that synthetic field?"

But most high schools are landlocked and don't have the freedom to have practice fields and the ability to limit usage year-round. Abella admits that the new turfs provide the kind of durability he can't guarantee.

"If you're going to use that field 365 days a year through changing conditions, synthetic turf is the way to go," he states. "But there are a lot of questions that need to be answered about these new products."

Another possibility in the future of field surfacing is called GrassMaster. It plants synthetic fibers into a natural grass field, making it stronger and incredibly resilient.

The only GrassMaster field currently extant in the United States is at Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos and in its first year of use, it was the only grass field in the NFL that didn't have to be resodded between the hash marks during the season.

"A lot of people don't believe us, but it will ast for 20 years" declares Richard McDonald, project manager at GrassMaster's office in Minneapolis.

According to McDonald, GrassMaster was developed a company in Holland and uses a machine to inject around 17 million 7-inch synthetic fibers into a grass field. The fibers provide strong roots for the natural grass.

GrassMaster costs around $250,000 and requires only regular natural grass maintenance. The concept has been used successfully in Europe's professional soccer leagues for 10 years.

But for now, products like AstroPlay and FieldTurf are the current kings of a market that is full of smaller competitors.

Choosing a synthetic field these days is a matter of personal preference. Perhaps the best suggestion for deciding which turf to install comes from Rick Eveleth, the AD from La Jolla (CA) H.S.:

"What you've got to do is take your athletes down to each of these fields and have them run around on them. Let them decide for you."