Taos looks to pandemic funds for football field fix
Athletic programs consume a relatively small fraction of Taos County school district budgets each year, and communities face a variety of challenges when it comes to maintaining their sports fields and gymnasiums. From Peñasco to Questa, school districts employ different approaches to try and ensure their student teams can play ball year after year.
Taos Municipal Schools District Superintendent Lillian Torrez estimated that around 92 percent of her district’s $20.2 million budget is spent on staff and teachers, with about $300,000 dedicated to athletics each year. Like other school districts, Taos relies on state capital outlay funding to pay for timesensitive and big-ticket improvements. But those appropriations don’t always pan out, especially when the requests lack supporting information about why and how, exactly, the money is going to be spent.
The district received a total of $500,000 in capital outlay funding from the state legislature this year, including $200,000 for “security upgrades.” But school officials were disappointed to learn that a $1.5-million request on their behalf from District 6 N.M. Sen. Roberto “Bobby” J. Gonzales “to plan, design, construct, demolish, remove and replace the artificial turf on the football field and the track for
the Taos municipal school district in Taos county” was denied.
On Tuesday (April 26), Taos hosted several schools for a track and field meet at the Taos Tiger Invite, where cracks throughout the track were visible, as well as a chunk that’s missing near the inside lane. Underneath the field’s aging turf, there are drainage and substrate issues that need to be addressed.
Next to the football field is the Taos baseball field, which is the only field in the high school complex that uses real grass. The climate in Northern New Mexico takes a toll on the field, even though it’s maintained daily with aeration and raking, but the weather isn’t the only problem: There are several praire dog holes throughout the outfield.
Like Bill Murray in “Caddyshack,” district facilities director Robert Valencia admits dealing with the praire dogs can be problematic, as you can’t use poisons or a quick sure-fire method of removing them. Valencia explained that the sound of heavy machinery or commotion from sporting events keeps the animals from being active during the school year.
Valencia would prefer to have turf instead: “We would want turf. Of course. Yeah. We would want to do that. You know? Why wouldn’t you?”
At least for now, however, the focus is on the track and football field. The baseball field would follow. So far there is a schematic proving an intention to replace the old field with synthetic turf. The dimension and layout of the new field would be similar to the current one, but the material would be different.
Following a February presentation by lobbyist Stephen Archuleta, who summarized the district’s wins and losses coming out of the regular 30-day legislative session, Board of Education President Mark Flores asked the district’s facilities director, Valencia, to come up with a detailed assessment of the field’s condition in order to better prepare for next year’s round of capital outlay funding.
“I don’t think you realize, when you’re sitting in Santa Fe in an office, how important that field is to the community,” Archuleta said, to which Flores added: “That is where people still go to cheer on the Tigers and to cheer on their graduates; I think that I’ve seen people with special needs go there
to exercise on their wheelchairs because, you know, the dirt roads and the gravel.”
According to a March assessment by Lone Mountain Contracting, Inc., the district could get another five years of use out of the track and field if it invested between $350,000-$400,000 in funding for repairs.
This is a question the school board brought up to James Carr, lead project manager with Bosque Farms-based Lone Mountain Contracting, the company that completed the project.
“If we do these repairs, how much longer do you think that
it would increase the life of the track?” a board member asked.
Carr: “A typical surface structure [spray]….you would probably get a good five more years out of it, out of the track.”
“What really would be the cost to totally repair it [the football field]? We’re not putting in $350,000 and then in five years, I mean, let’s say we do get money from the legislature and have to redo this, we would have lost the money, I believe, in just repairing it. And so, what would it cost to fix this problem at this point?” the board member followed up.
Carr said that repairing the field
is not an all-or-nothing proposition. “The repairs that we’re recommending on your turf, I would not consider it a loss because, in replacing turf, normally the old turf is simply peeled back. The existing subgrade is just checked and made sure it’s up to standards and then the new turf is laid. In the case of your field, that would not happen. They would have to make these repairs anyway at that time. The repairs we are recommending on the turf — which is about $175,000 — would be the same repairs and the same additional costs that would be made if the turf was replaced, so those repairs would have to be made one way or another.”
The Taos Tigers’ football field and the track around it was installed in 2008, but “because of the consistent grooming and maintenance by staff and Valencia,” it has outlasted its expected lifespan of 10 years, according to Carr. In that time, the football team won its first state 4A title in school history in 2018 with a 14-7 win over the Bloomfield Bobcats.
Every year, before the first game of the season, the field goes through a thorough maintenance process that Lone Mountain Contracting is part of. As Valencia explained, “we do a lot of care on it, we invest money in it.”
Also in that span of time since the last track installation, the track and field team has been perennially excellent under Benny Mitchell’s tenure. They’ve won titles in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. This places Taos as tied for third for the all-time record of most consecutive team state championships in New Mexico high school athletics.
In 2008, the color of the track was neither red nor black, but instead, a custom orange. Red and black are the most common colors due to their stability under UV exposure. As the most produced and accessible of the track colors, they’re also less expensive.
At the time, Valencia said the exotic color would ultimately cost an extra $45,000.
Some among the coaching staff remember the track surface turning from a bright orange to a pale peach within six months of the installation. What appears to be heavy fading at the current track is actually the remnants of the old orange colored track bleeding through.
In 2015, Lone Mountain Contracting completely resurfaced the track and painted it black, which cost $79,500. The company advised Valencia the resurfacing should hold for another 10 to 12 years. Seven years after that resurfacing, the company is now advising to spend $175,000 on fixing the cracks.
Valencia agreed to give the Taos News a tour of the 14-year-old track and football field. There’s a steep dip toward the far ends of the field in back of the endzones, which is an area that should receive less action than other segments, as it’s out of bounds. Looked at from afar and with complete attention to detail, one can see a subtle curviness to the lines that run across the football field, which are supposed to run straight. Other than that, the untrained eye doesn’t pick up too many other deficiencies, and Valencia is proud of the work that has maintained the field for the athletes who use it.
“We’ve done a great job on it that somebody, an outsider, can come look at it and say, ‘Man, this field looks immaculate,’ which they always do. We’re always being complimented.”
Valencia explained that the three colors visible on the field — black, orange and green — aren’t painted on, it’s actually three differently-colored turfs glued together.
Another interesting oddity Valencia pointed out was a visible S pattern along the track. Apparently, some kids rode their bikes on the track during the curing process after it was installed.
What’s more important than the appearance of a field is the field’s shock absorption capabilities, Valencia said. That’s where the troubling GMAX score from Lone Mountain Contracting comes into play.
A GMAX is the unit of measurement quantifying the hardiness of a surface, its ability to soften impact for a would-be football player tackled into the ground. The tests contractors use involve what looks like half of a hydraulic press slamming straight down at high
speeds, thus simulating the helmet of a wide receiver who just dove for a football. The higher the GMAX of a field, the harder the field is, and the likelier a player will be of getting either a concussion or a lower-body stress injury from wear and tear.
The Taos Tigers football field is safely beneath the industry standard of a 165 GMAX. There are a few spots on the field, such as the 50-yard line, where the Taos Tigers logo growls, where the GMAX rating approaches the safety threshold. The scores of the local football field coincide with its age and its need for either repair or overhaul.
But the district didn’t note the GMAX analysis and other specific supporting information about
drainage problems and track deterioration before it submitted its capital outlay request to the legislature. Two months after the school board originally discussed its rejected capital request and looming football field woes, the district has re-envisioned how to fix the track and field, and at a quarter of the cost.
Superintendent Torrez indicated that the district’s Finance Department believes it can use some of the district’s $5.2 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to resurface the field and the track.
“You have to have the right language, and you have to get it approved by [the N.M. Public Education Department], so we have quite a bit of work to do,” in order to use pandemic-relief dollars on the athletic field, Torrez said. “But the good news is, it’s looking like
we’re making some gains on the funding and on the vendors.”
Torrez and facilities manager Valencia said the district is seeking a total of four quotes for the job, all of which will come from contractors who are pre-approved by the Public Education Department.
Administrators told the school board that two quotes for repairing the field had been received, and that up to two more quotes were expected soon.
Football is already a dangerous endeavor, and uneven or deteriorating athletic fields can lead to injuries in any sport. Valencia said the field is safe to use for the time being.
“The field is playable. It is safe. But we know that it’s end-of-life [and] we need to change it,” Valencia told the school board earlier this month. “And the sooner we get this done — it is an emergency and time is of the essence — the quicker we can go ahead and have the football team enjoy it and the community and we can all be in awe and happy.”
“We want people to come in from all parts of the state, even out of state, and be able to know that they have that warm fuzzy feeling that they’re in a safe field and all that good stuff. We’re running on a safe track, that’s our main priority. So, of course, safety, safety, safety.”