Today was another perfect example of why the village needs the turf fields proposed in the BOE referendum. For the third time in six weeks, the RJFA was forced to cancel their Saturday flag football program due to over-saturtion of the fields at Vets. Families paid $75 per child for this program, which plays once a week on Saturday mornings from 8-9am. About 80 2nd and 3rd graders spend about 20 minutes going through basic skill drills and then spend the rest of the hour scrimaging against other teams of 5-6 within the program. This is a great introduction to football in a fun environment. Yet, the children have only been able to play 3 times this fall, due to rain the night before.

Our fields drain so poorly, that they cannot handle even modest amounts of rain, forcing the closure of fields and/or cancellation of sporting events that these children look forward to all week and parents spend several hundred to thousands of dollars for (esspecially when more than one child is involved).

So, while I would rather have grass fields in a “perfect world”, in the reality of Ridgewood today we need more fields like the one at Maple. These fields are safe and do not have “residue” (dangerous or otherwise) that comes off, as claimed in the post above. These fields would provide an environmental benefit by saving approximately 100,000 car tires from being placed in land-fills, avoiding thousands of pounds of fertilizer and chemicals from being deposited in the flood plain and saving hundreds of hours of mowing at each field each year. In addition, most kids prefer the synthetic surface for some reason.

Between last spring and this fall, over 30% of youth sports practices and games scheduled on Ridgewood fields (other than Maple) have been canceled or moved to Maple. That is simply unacceptable. If the BOE can build fields at Stevens and RHS that have the same aesthetic appeal of Maple, then I am strongly in favor of the proposal in the referendum.