The Rhea County High School football field is being converted to Astroturf.Rhea County will be the first public school in southeast Tennessee to play its home football games on artificial turf.
As part of major construction on the Evensville campus, including the building of a new high school, Rhea County will have a new track encompassing an Astroturf playing surface.
“It’s construction so I don’t know that they’ll be on time, but the deadline is July 30, so it should be ready before the season starts,” Golden Eagles football coach Doug Greene said.
With the current high school being converted to a middle school and the new school going up behind the existing buildings, Rhea County felt a need to upgrade the football facility because of increased demand for use.
“That’s the whole reason,” county schools superintendent Jerry Levengood said. “We’ll have joint facilities for athletics, and use on the [football] field was problematic. We knew we’d have middle and high school football and soccer teams and bands for both, plus ROTC, so we looked into the possibility of an artificial surface.”