Arizona Stadium construction moving along; new turf installed soon
Reporter: Aaron Brackett
TUCSON (KGUN9-TV) - As part of a 73 million dollar facelift Arizona Atadium will be getting new synthetic turf.
Monday, piles of dirt covered the 30 yard line as crews worked to level the playing field before next fall, something that needs to be done before the first roll of turf hits the ground. According to the university, the one million dollar turf won't arrive on the dirt surface until June first, just 3 months away from the Wildcats' first home game.
Athletic Director Greg Byrne says everything is on schedule, but fan's might not notice some of the changes. "It's a little different when you look at it, it looks like grass, it even feels like grass, so the technology has come a long way and its incredible," said Byrne.
Swapping old fashioned grass for that high tech turf will take a lot of prep work, but Byrne says it will be worth it for two key reasons.
"Its about 35 degrees cooler than your standard artificial surface, so that will help us out early in the year," said Byrne. "On top of that, from a consistency standpoint, the nice thing about field turf is that there are no holes in it."
According to Byrne, last year, there were seven ACL injuries during the season. He says while injuries are inevitable in football, the level synthetic turf should cut those down.





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