It's simply ridiculous for
The Daily News and other media to allow those types of comments to be posted to its site. Many forms of media are guilty of the behavior, but newspapers must take the brunt of the flogging because they've historically been perceived as more reputable and credible that their electronic counterparts.
Former Wellsville coach dies: Wellsville teacher and former coach Jim Stein died Saturday, the Wellsville Daily Reporter said. He was 60 years old.
Wellsville AD Dennis Miles said Stein was raking leaves with some students up at his mother’s house when he had an apparent heart attack.
There is nothing he wouldn’t do for you as a friend," Miles told the paper. "One thing I admired about him as a teacher and as a coach, Jim Stein got all the ability out of the kids they had — he was that kind of a person."
Stein coached a variety of sports over the years including girls basketball, swimming, baseball and football.
Turf issue rehashed: The Democrat and Chronicle revisted some of the issues related to artifcial turf in a lengthy Page 1 story yesterday. There was nothing new reported in the way of data on potentially unhealthy levels of lead or differences in injury rates on turf vs. natural grass, but it was a thorough recap of the summer's hot issue in school sports.
Buried deep in the story, though, were some broad cost estimates that point out that a $1 million turf installation typically needs to be replaced at a similar cost approximately every decade or so.
"If you want me to build you a new field, give me a million dollars," said John Gaffney, Rush-Henrietta's head groundskeeper for 26 years. "If it's artificial turf, at the end of 10 years I'll come back and ask for more money. If you put in a natural grass field, at the end I'm going to come back and give you some change. If a natural grass field is built professionally top-to-bottom and well-maintained, there's nothing more beautiful and safer to play on."
That screamed for a rebuttal, especially in an 1,800-word story. The story said nothing, so here's my take:
It's true that artificial turf can almost never be as cost-efficient as natural grass when analyzed over any period of time from one to fifty years because of the huge replacement cost referenced above. But what about the practical, day-to-day advantages of FieldTurf and similar surfaces?
It's possible to play a football or lacrosse quadrupleheader on FieldTurf the day after (or even the same day, for that matter) the sort of heavy rain we routinely get in the fall and spring. Try playing even one game on natural grass under similar conditions. After two hours of abuse, the field will require intensive work for the next two to three days and could very well be unavailable for practice or games for a full week or more.
That means moving practices -- or even canceling them if the rest of the school's facilities are already stretched to the limit. It also means moving games from the stadium, complete with bleachers, lights and concession stands, etc., to the adjacent JV field with no amenities for parents and other spectators.
I'm as much of a dollars and cents voter as the next guy, but I'd be hard-pressed to vote against a turf installation if it was ever placed on the ballot as a stand-alone, yes-or-no proposition.
[Related item: List of H.S. turf fields]
