San Antonio Madison Gets High Performance Football Field

Texas Multi-Chem, Ltd. completed a major football field renovation at San Antonio James Madison High School. The football field serves as the main practice location for the Northeast ISD 5A varsity squad. The natural turf field is used more than 250 days a year including football and off-season workouts, along with sub-varsity games across multiple sports.

Football Field Renovation at SA Madison

Prior to the renovation by TMC, this high traffic practice field couldn't keep up with the demands that the Madison HS athletic department put on it. In order to be a quality field that stands up to the frequent use, two main aspects affecting maintenance and playability needed to be addressed: soil and turfgrass type.

Sand Over Soil

Most high performing natural grass sports turf fields are sand-based. Sand based fields handle compaction better and filter water through the soil much faster. This makes for a much more consistent and uniform playing surface with superb cushion. Properly performing sand based fields can percolate from 10-20 inches of water per hour and still be played on at a high level.

Photo Gallery

Visit the photo gallery to see more SA Madison Football Practice Field images.

SA Madison Football Field Renovation

Additional Images

Check out the TMC Facebook page for even more photos of the SA Madison practice football field.

Previously, Madison's practice field was soil based. With the amount of activity on the field, the soil profile was too prone to compaction and often held too much water. This caused the athletic and maintenance departments to control access to the field, ultimately reducing the amount of time spent practicing and playing games. In addition, when it rained (or even on regular irrigation cycles) the field was often too wet for several hours (sometimes a full day was lost), further reducing the amount of time spent on the field.

To replace the previous soil with a sand based surface, more than 10 inches of material was removed from the Madison practice field and replaced with USGA sand. Completing this renovation required more than 180 truck loads of sand brought onto the site.

TifSport Hybrid Over Common Bermuda

Madison's practice field needed an improved turfgrass that was made for athletic fields. Common bermudagrass wasn't the ideal grass for their best practice field, so TifSport hybrid bermudagrass was installed. TifSport is a fine textured, consistent rich dark green hybrid bermudagrass that tolerates a close mowing behavior...perfect for most well-maintained sports fields in the south.

The field renovation was completed in time for the fall 2010 season when two-a-day football workouts started and is handling the additional day to day traffic since school has begun.

Joeris General Contractors, Inc.

Joeris General Contractors, Inc. of San Antonio was the general contractor on this renovation project. Texas Multi-Chem, Ltd. is a trusted partner of Joeris. In addition to the new sand based surface and TifSport turfgrass, Joeris managed the improvement of the practice field's irrigation capability as well as a new drainage system installation around the entire field to help water move from the field effectively.

The James Madison High School practice field renovation was TMC's third renovation project with San Antonio Northeast ISD. We appreciate the business and look forward to improving even more of San Antonio's sports fields in the near future!

Would you like your football fields to perform better? TMC can help...contact us at 1.800.292.1214