While the previous offseason saw an overhaul off-the-field for MTSU football with the hiring of head coach Derek Mason, the current offseason saw one on-the-field, literally.
Georgia based company, Shaw Sports Turf, installed a new artificial playing surface in Floyd Stadium early this month, giving Middle Tennessee a fresh field for the first time since 2014.
Although Floyd Stadium’s new surface surpasses its predecessor in style, perhaps its greatest innovation is toward player safety.
Shaw Sports Turf’s “GAME ON” technology emphasizes player health with its “tufted in” installation creating less seams and a smoother surface. Additionally, gone are the rubber pellets from the old turf making way for a walnut infield that will create much cooler mid-summer practices and early autumn gamedays for the Blue Raiders.
“The performance of the turf is so much better,” Mason said. “With all of the rubber infield that we used to have, the turf was hot. Now what we have with the walnut infield and the sand base, it doesn’t permeate heat. The heat sort of dispels, you don’t have the rubber pellets getting in guys’ eyes either so it’s pretty cool.”
Middle Tennessee’s new field also lowers the risk of injury as Shaw Sports Turf utilizes the “Head-To-Toe Athlete Approach” when designing its surfaces. The approach is designed around seven performance tests that indicate 7% of athletes’ injuries are impact related and affect the head while over 50% of injuries are stability related and affect the lower body.
To combat such data, MTSU’s turf comes with a half-inch layer of padding underneath the surface that reduces the blow that players take, Mason said.
“It feels like it’s got a little more bounce to it,” Mason said of the new turf. “It’s still settling but it’s something that’s easy to land on. Football is a contact sport, you’re going to fall in this game. There’s a difference between falling on concrete and falling on a padded soft pillow; this is somewhere in between.”
From the players’ perspective, the fresh field serves as a significant upgrade as the prior turf was prone to cause knee and shin injuries, with redshirt freshman quarterback Roman Gagliano suffering the latter last season, he said.
The removal and installation process took roughly six weeks and served as MTSU’s latest effort to modernize its aging athletic facilities, with the new Student Athletes Performance Center’s (SAPC) ribbon-cutting coming up on July 30.
Improved safety measures combined with the aesthetic changes have been enough to excite the university’s student athletes, even for not-so-exciting tasks.
“That was the most excited I’ve ever seen us getting ready to condition, just being out here,” Gagliano said. “Obviously, the new building (SAPC) is coming along great too so you can definitely feel what’s coming for us for sure.”
The Blue Raiders will look to defend their new “home turf” for the first time when opening the season against Austin Peay on Aug. 30.
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