Bits & Pieces

By Kim J. Harmon

 

For about 20 minutes, I watched the installation of the new turf field at Treadwell Park this week and it struck me that it looked as if the guys were laying down a rug in my living room.

I haven’t yet set foot on the new field, but I have been on the new turf fields at Ridgefield and Pomperaug High Schools and I can attest to how incredible they look and feel. I have been on artificial turf fields before and remember distinctly going to a girls’ lacrosse game in West Haven on a shoddy artificial turf field that was bulging in places and offered almost no bounce.

Artificial grass has come a long way since the famed Astroturf in Houston.

It was the Chemstrand Company that started developing synthetic fibers for use in carpeting and in the early 1960s began developing a new artificial playing surface. The first such surface was installed at the Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, but the first such surface that anyone remembers is the field at the Houston Astrodome in 1965 – home to Houston Astros (previously known as the Houston Colt .45s prior to the opening of the dome). In the fall of 1966, the Houston Oilers opened their American Football League season on the new carpet.

Oddly enough, the turf wasn’t patented until two years later.

But those early turfs – while saving on re-sodding and such – devastated a lot of professional athletic careers. The turf at the Philadelphia Eagles’ former stadium was so beat up and dangerous that teams refused to play on it.

In the 1990s, more and more teams returned to grass and those that can’t turned to these new turfs.

It looks like grass, but it feels a whole lot better than grass. If Newtown High School is able to install a new turf field (it’s a major part of a new fundraising project being started by the Newtown Blue & Gold Booster Club) it would be terrific.

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Soccer Fest!

When the Newtown High School boys’ soccer will host perennial nemesis Brookfield on Thursday, September 22, at 7 pm, it will be under the guise of the first annual Newtown Soccer Fest.

Admission will be free, but since it will be a fund raising event, there will be many ways to contribute and win some cool prizes. Lots of activities are planned for all ages. It promises to be a great family night out, with the best soccer in the state … guaranteed!

Ha – as if anyone really needed an incentive to watch the CIAC Class LL-defending champions take the field against a rival like Brookfield.

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If you’re not ready to put the golf clubs away just yet, there is a couple of golf tournaments coming up this month.

The third annual Newtown Democratic Town Committee golf outing will be held Tuesday, September 6, at 1 pm, at Richter Park Golf Course in Danbury. And the Jim Osborne Memorial Golf Classic, sponsored by the Newtown Rotary Club, will be held Monday, September 12, at Tashua Knolls Golf Club in Trumbull.

For the Dems golf outing, contact Jim McKenna (426-6235), Mike Kelley (426-6924), Pat Murphy (270-1054) or Jim Shpunt (426-2120) for further information. For the Osborne Classic, contact Alan Clavette (426-2080), Paul Lux (426-8332) or Dick Sturdevant (426-5957).

Richter Park and Tashua Knolls are two of the finest courses in the area and should promise a fine day of golf.

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 This has nothing to do with sports, but it’s a question I have to ask.

Why would Hurricane Katrina cause the price of gas to rise some 30 cents a gallon on has that was already in the station’s tanks?

I don’t understand.

I also don’t understand how I can drive two miles up the road, from Waterbury to Wolcott, and save about 17 cents a gallon on gas when last summer you were lucky - lucky! - to save two or three cents a gallon if you drove across town.

My, sounds an awful lot like profiteering to me.

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It always warms my heart to hear stories of kind-hearted behavior, even heroism, in the wake of a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina but it distresses me that it has to be tempered with stories of people looting stores and taking advantage of a tragedy just to benefit themselves.

Sometimes humanity stinks.