In West Texas, a parched football field spells crisis

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
3 October 2011 Reporting from Robert Lee, Texas — It is the day before homecoming, and there is trouble at the Robert Lee High School football field. The field is dying. The field that was once so lush, so emerald green, that the maintenance staff took calls from other schools begging to know its secret. Visitors sometimes assumed it was AstroTurf, then genuflected and found, to their surprise, real blades of springy Bermuda grass. Then came Texas’ punishing drought. The parched field now has patches of yellow and brown while the rest struggles to stay green. Robert Lee is not alone. All across Texas, in heat-battered towns where water towers hang like giant IVs, high schools are struggling with fields where grass has shriveled, dirt has hardened and artificial turf has become too hot to handle. In a town this small — population 1,050 — everyone holds a memory of the field. It was where wide receiver Lupe Torres learned the meaning of dedication. Where quarterback Aaron Hood made his father, then superintendent, proud. And where defensive end Jimmy Skinner played on the team that won the Region I championship in 1984. So people here are doing everything they can think of to save it. After all, this isn’t just about a game. Here in West Texas, football is God, and the field is church. At the start of a recent school day, Coach Shay Avants, 35, strides past the orange and black “Robert Lee Steers” sign to survey the field. He glances up. Gray clouds have been roiling since dawn. All across town, named after the Confederate general, people are talking rain. Since the start of summer, they have received less than an inch. Avants stops under a goal post and kicks the field. Dust rises. That’s not uncommon in the red clay fields of Coke County, about 250 miles west of Dallas. Around here they quote an old saying about football — “three yards and a cloud of dust” — with the emphasis on dust. But it’s not supposed to be this bad. They have been watering twice a day. The record-breaking heat wave evaporated everything, even overnight. Nearby San Angelo recorded 97 days of triple-digit temperatures. “We seeded,” Avants says, “but the seed never came out.” The storm has cooled the temperature into the mid-70s, but it will rise to 100 by day’s end. The coach looks up again and scowls. “We’re not going to have a miracle overnight,” he says. “I’m sure the opposing team … I can’t imagine what they’ll think.” The opposing team is the Blackwell Hornets. The Steers once felt sorry for them because they trained on such a paltry little field. Last year, the Hornets got artificial turf, and with it, a sense of superiority. But even schools with artificial turf, including Robert Lee’s longtime rival, the Bronte Longhorns, have suffered. At Wylie High School near Dallas, where the temperature on its field reached 185 degrees this summer — coaches snapped photos of thermometers to prove it — crews started watering the fake turf to cool it down, and practices were held on a grass field instead. In Robert Lee, problems with water go back years before the current drought. The level of a nearby lake dropped during the last decade, and with it the town and school population, with 100 fewer students. Seven years ago, the school rolls fell to about 275 students, down from five to two busloads, and the Steers were forced to go from 11-man to six-man football.