Burnet’s Bulldog Field taking shape with new artificial turf and track

JENNIFER FIERRO • STAFF WRITER

BURNET — The synthetic turf has been installed at Bulldog Field at Burnet High School. Now workers are busy adding some of the final touches to the turf, the black fencing around the facility and the new eight-lane track.

Athletic director and head football coach Kurt Jones, Superintendent Keith McBurnett and project workers have been walking and looking at various parts of the facility.

“They still have more infield to put into it,” Jones said of the turf. “They’ll finish it up in the next 24 to 48 hours. There are other details around they’ll finish though the weekend.”

Among some of the chores left for the field are pouring synthetic pebbles onto the field that will settle underneath the turf as it’s played on. Those pebbles give extra cushion for tackles and help with protection.

“There’s a natural process that happens when you put synthetic turf down,” Jones said.

The word “Burnet” is in the north end zone with “Bulldogs” in the south end and the football logo on the 50-yard line. The home sideline is complete, Jones said, and workers are busy completing the visitors side.

Workers are planning to start installing the track July 24, a project expected to finish in 8-10 days, the athletic director said, which would mean it’s done by Aug. 5 or Aug. 6.

That also means football players will not be able to practice on the field when training camp begins Aug. 3, which wasn’t a surprise, Jones said.

“We’ve known that all along,” he said. “That’s not a big deal to us. We’ll work on natural grass (at the school’s practice fields) the first week. Then, we’ll have three or four days to work on it before our scrimmage against Llano.”

The scrimmage is Aug. 14 with time still to be announced.

The eight-lane track will be a light gray in color. Jones said that color stood out to him during his stadium tours.

“We liked the way it looked with the color-scheme plan,” he said. “We traveled around a few different schools and said, ‘That looks sharp.’ We ran it by our committee and our board, and they agreed.”

Jones said administrators are happy to see how close the stadium is to being completed considering May rains, which were the most on record in the state of Texas, had put workers behind schedule. But Jones credited laborers for working long hours each day to get back on schedule.

“I knew we started the project a couple of weeks early,” he said. “We feel good about it.”

jfierro@thepicayune.com