On the surface of school sports Image courtesy of Grassports Australia
By Heather Barker Vermeer Industry Reporter
Stellar sports grounds need quality playing surfaces. Professional sports surfaces boost the calibre of athletes you can attract as well as staff morale, student participation, community engagement, plus visual appeal for your school branding. Reputation aside, however, there are health and safety benefits to properly maintaining and upgrading school sports surfaces. Maintenance should be planned as part of the project and being pro-active in this can save money and time lost due to surface degradation, particularly when it comes to
drainage. When a new synthetic surface is installed, moss and algae are not an issue. Over time, however, surfaces become affected by natural debris, such as leaves, soil, and litter, as well as weather events like the recent floods. All this can enable algae and moss to grow. Scheduled maintenance will keep your surface at the standard it should be aesthetically, and for optimum safety and playability. Stellar sports surfaces can also diversify the types of activities students can play on the ground. Whether your current priority is a ballin’ basketball court, a pristine cricket wicket, an international standard hockey turf, state-of-the-art squash court or an all-weather athletics track, there is a tried and tested process to achieving the results
you want for your school and ensure you don’t slip up. Options include, but are not limited to, all-weather artificial turf, synthetic multi-sports courts, sand-based fields with hybrid turf reinforcement, or hardwearing acrylic court surfaces. The major trend in Australia recently has become synthetic multi-sport courts, which remove the weather-dependency of what can be wet, muddy winter sports fields and enable a variety of sports to be played year-round. Increasingly, these are brightly coloured and marked for many sports, with bold design in primary colours intended to act as a magnet to young minds. Many primary and secondary schools choose not only to add netball, basketball, hockey,
and tennis markings, but incorporate additional features such as hopscotch, four square and handball, along with many other ball game variations for maximum usability of your multi-use sports surface. Your cost analysis will determine how bold you can be, so consider construction, maintenance, renewal, decommissioning, and cost per hour of use. It can be wise to go on site visits to sports fields in your area yourself, prior to engaging a consultant, and ask questions of those responsible not only for the decision-making but the upkeep of facilities: benefit from the learnings of others and ascertain what you personally, and as a school, believe to be good practice in this field.
Images courtesy of Aussie Outdoor Design
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SPORTS & RECREATION
Term 2, 2022 | school-news.com.au
