CHICKAMAUGA, Ga. – Gordon Lee High School will become the latest area football program to utilize field turf, associate athletic director Greg Ellis said.
The field, being installed by Dalton’s AstroTurf, will be completed in time for the school’s first game, according to Ellis, and is the latest in a line of improvements for the campus.
“There have been a lot of improvements to the school and we want to make sure our athletic facilities are also first class,” said Ellis, the former head football coach who re-joined the school recently after two years as Bill Price’s assistant coach at Signal Mountain. “We’re also re-doing the baseball field, using the dirt we’re removing from the football field to level it up, and we’re doing some work to the softball field.”
Gordon Lee joins Calhoun and Ridgeland in northwest Georgia as well as Baylor and McCallie in Chattanooga as area schools with the synthetic turf. Ellis and Clay Crowder, who recently was named the school’s principal after serving as the athletic director, talked with several administrators whose schools have the field turf and quickly made the decision to have it installed.
“Our turf will be much like Ridgeland’s and McCallie’s in that it’s got the shorter turf which makes for a faster field,” Ellis said. “Everybody’s excited about it, and in time it will prove to be very economically beneficial as well since we will no longer have to water it or mow it. We talked to a lot of folks that have it and they all love it.