GREENVILLE, Mich. (WOOD) — A blanket of snow-covered high school football fields a day before several West Michigan districts will host teams for the state semifinals.
Greenville High School with be hosting Muskegon and Dewitt for Division 3.
Crews began clearing the snow on Wednesday from Legacy Field and spent several hours on Friday removing the latest layer, according to Athletic Director Brian Zdanowski.
“It’s not going to be perfect but we’ll be able to have a football game tomorrow,” Zdanowski said.
The athletic director said the district is used to hosting the state semifinals and has a team committed to getting the job done.
“This is our 11th season we’ve had the stadium here. We’ve had a semifinal all 11 years and a couple (of) years we had two semis and then we also used to host the eight-man finals,” Zdanowski said.
Removing the flakes from the artificial field requires special techniques to avoid damaging the turf.
“It’s not really our idea but we put PVC pipe on the bottom of our plows that way it keeps it from digging into the turf and damaging the turf,” Zdanowski said.
The head coach of South Christian High School, Danny Brown, said his team will use the field to practice ahead of its game Saturday in Battle Creek and that finding a clear field in the middle of a snowstorm is far from easy.
“We play our games at East Kentwood and their field is under and so we were gonna get shovels out and have dads and kids do it but we obviously got the big storm last night so it was gonna take a lot of hours,” Brown said.
Clearing the stadium seats will also be a big task but Greenville will have some help from its students.
“We’ve actually have got a group of students coming out tomorrow at 8 a.m. It’s gonna cost me a bunch of pizza for them and they’re going to be shoveling off stands and doing what they can,” Zdanowski said.
The athletic director for Greenville said the process of clearing the field is not over yet with more snow in the forecast.
“As long as we don’t get bombarded with you know 10 inches of snow tonight we should be okay,” Zdanowski said.
Muskegon plays Dewitt Saturday on the field starting at 1 p.m.
