Home at last
After enduring a couple of years of frustration and litigation, the sports teams at Judge Memorial will finally have their artificial turf field.
I touched on this news briefly in my preview of Judge’s football team over the weekend. But I thought I would share some additional thoughts about it here on the high school blog.
Finally having access to the reconstructed field is a big relief to Judge coaches and players from several sports who have had to travel just to play home games over the past couple of seasons.
The new field will serve the needs of the football team, both soccer teams, the track team and the lacrosse team.
After spending last season playing home games at Granite High, Bulldogs football coach James Cordova is happy to be home. His team played 11 games in nine different stadiums the year the hillside at the south end of the field eroded and made the playing surface unsafe.
He said that playing home games at a neutral site became physically and mentally draining to his team after a while.
“Getting ready for football isn’t putting on your athletic shorts and a t-shirt,” Cordova said. “In getting ready for football, you got to lace up, you got to strap up, you got to put on your shoulder pads and helmet. It’s a time intensive process. It gets exhausting when you have to add 15, 20 minutes or 30 minutes to each game.”
Getting back to normal travel patterns for game day will be an added bonus for Judge. Cordova said that it will offer a degree of normalcy to his team to have its own home field — a first for some of the younger players on the team.
“It’s hard to travel,” Cordova said. “I know there’s teams back east that travel to all their games. But they grew up traveling all to their games.”
It will definitely be a boon to all the Bulldog teams that will make use of the finally completed field. I have covered Judge soccer and football games at Granite High the past couple years and the aged outdated facilities definitely had an impact. The lines on the football field were faint. Locker rooms were small and cramped.
It will be interesting to see what impact a new home field will have on the fortunes of these different teams. My guess? Having a nice facility in which to practice and play will make the Bulldogs return to dominance in some of these sports.
The stadium will be officially rededicated on the school’s Red and Gold Day on Friday. Gates will open at 4:15 p.m. and will scrimmages by the lacrosse, football, girls’ volleyball and the boys’ soccer teams.
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