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Work starts on base football/soccer field

  • Published
  • By Mike W. Ray
  • Tinker Public Affairs
TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  Dirtwork has begun in preparation for installation of 101,000 square feet of artificial turf at Tinker's football/soccer field. A spokeswoman for the prime contractor said installation of the synthetic surface is scheduled to start about Jan. 20 and will take approximately one month to complete.

The manufacturer reported that white football boundary lines and hash marks, and yellow soccer boundaries and hash marks, will be inlaid in the artificial turf, and the 15-foot-wide panels of turf will be double sewn with heavy-duty thread.

The football/soccer field is used year-round because not only is it a venue for sporting events, military units perform early-morning physical conditioning on the field almost daily.

Lt. Col. Ralph Hawkins, 513th Air Control Group executive officer, is hopeful the field will be finished in time for the March 4 start of the eighth season of spring flag football. "It will be a refreshing change from using smaller fields in the outfields of the softball diamonds," said Hawkins, who is the commissioner of Tinker's Spring Flag Football League.

The 72nd Air Base Wing Safety Office declared the football field off-limits two years ago because of various hazardous conditions. Consequently, ever since then, spring and fall flag football games have been played in the outfield of the base softball fields, and the base intramural soccer league has had to use the Airman Leadership field, which has never had lighting for night games.

Additionally, because the softball fields are smaller than the gridiron --which has a 100-yard playing field plus a pair of 10-yard end zones, and is 53.3 yards (160 feet) wide -- the flag football teams have been reduced to playing 6-on-6 instead of 8-on-8.