Ludlow High School will soon be seeing red, not financially, but on their historic James Rigney Stadium football field.
The High School announced their new football synthetic turf project will get underway in early 2023 with expected completion for July 1, just in time for the 2023 season to begin. It won’t be the standard green turf — the school chose instead to go with red to match the school’s color.
The school released renderings of the proposed field, with upgrades to the track surrounding the field as well.
“It’s been the talk of the town,” Ludlow football coach and co-Athletic Director Greg Taphouse said. “The kids are excited and the hype back down here is through the roof. It’s not just football either, it’s great for all athletes.”
Ludlow Independent Schools Superintendent Mike Borchers said the project has been discussed for years and with it being a small school in Northern Kentucky, they wanted to make a bold statement for their athletics. No high school football fields are known to have red turf across the country, and Eastern Washington University is the lone college field to have red turf.
“From a community standpoint, the board and I have been wanting to do this for years. With all the construction set to take place at the school they were going to need our practice field and put all the equipment there and stage everything,” Borchers said. “So we started looking at our field, wanted to stay with the theme and reached out to Eastern Washington and talked to their associate AD and went ahead and pulled the trigger.”
As opposed to the normal rubber fill for the majority of football turf projects, Ludlow’s field sits in a flood plane, so they went with the enviro fill route. Enviro fill is sand granules that sit on it and is heavier that packs down more if it floods. If another historic flood like 1997 came around again, the enviro fill would protect the field from being damaged.
“It will be nice when it rains real hard during the week and you’re scrambling to figure out what to do, not having to worry about that anymore,” Borchers said. “We’ve had some successful athletic teams recently, hosted playoff games and a district soccer tournament. It will be nice to not have weather be a factor.”
The turf life expectancy is around 12 to 15 years, Borchers said.
The cost of the field is roughly $900,000, Borchers stating they’ll save $40-45,000 year on the upkeep of the grass field.
“That money will be kept in a rolling account for when we need to resurface it those funds will be available,” Borchers said.
James Rigney Stadium is 85 years old, built in 1937. It was one of the last few in NKY with natural grass. Lloyd Memorial is also going the grass to turf route, with their $3.3 million project on Cecil Dees Field with new bleachers and a new track underway.
The new turf will also be used for other athletics and the band can practice there as well.
“This is something great for our kids, all the way down to the pee-wee and middle school levels,” Borchers said. “It’s a beautiful setting and we’re hoping to put the pine trees there that back up to the river. Where the practice field is we’re hoping to eventually add parking.”
The project is not correlated with the $23 million special offer of assistance from the State Facilities Construction Commission to help bring the school up to date that was announced in April.
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