ALSO.....

Hoosiers Upgrade to AstroPlay for 2003 Season
Bloomington, Ind. - The renovations continue at Indiana University's Memorial Stadium thanks to the generous gifts of Hoosier donors. Thanks to gifted money, when the Hoosiers take to the field on September 13 in their home opener against Indiana State, the two teams will do battle on AstroPlay, a new state-of-the-art turf surface. The announcement of the new playing surface at Memorial Stadium comes just one month after Indiana announced that the football team locker room will be renovated, thanks to a donation from former Hoosier and current Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Trent Green and his wife, IU alum, Julie (Lentz) Green.

"This is a terrific addition for our program. A lot of time and research went into our decision to make a change and we determined that this change is in the best interest of our student-athletes," Head Coach Gerry DiNardo said. "In addition to having a state-of-the-art competition surface, this will allow us to have the ability to add another practice field into our rotation without damaging the gameday field. We are often practicing into the early evening and lighting has become an issue. Now we will have a lighted field to use for practice."

Last fall the Hoosiers practiced on the soccer practice fields. At times the team was forced to move from the soccer fields to the inner field at the track & field complex and then to Memorial Stadium under the lights, all in one practice session. This season the team will benefit from the new practice fields adjacent to Memorial Stadium and the new AstroPlay surface in Memorial stadium.

The contract was awarded to AstroPlay for $446,000 and it includes a ten-year guarantee from the company. AstroPlay fields look and play like optimum grass fields, yet they offer even more advantages: all-weather performance, durability and safety. The surface is tufted polyethylene fibers with a rubber in-fill on top of a pad.

"We found that the current grass surface was very expensive to maintain and in recent years it created poor playing conditions. Our estimations showed resodding the field would cost about $150,000 every three years and maintenance costs of a grass field were $75,000 per year," Indiana Director of Athletics Terry Clapacs said. "On a life cycle this new turf is much less expensive and it is a more reliable surface."

"We visited a number of schools and many schools are faced with the same space problems that we are faced with," special assistant to the athletic director and former IU head football coach Bill Mallory said. "I totally agree with Coach DiNardo on this decision and am very excited about the change. We will be able to put Memorial Stadium to good use. I spoke with both of my sons, who coach at Illinois and Oklahoma State, and their head coaches, and they could not say enough good things about the playing surface. I also spoke with a trainer at one of the schools and he said that he saw injuries decrease by 30 percent with the installation of the turf surface. This was a decision that we spent a lot of time researching and one that I am very excited about."

Indiana played on AstroPlay last season when the Hoosiers traveled to Illinois. The addition of turf at Memorial Stadium will now bring the total to five Big Ten schools that will have a turf playing surfaces in 2003, including Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota.

The project is expected to begin in early July and be completed by the start of football practice in early August.