Oak Lawn Football Field Finally Ready, Sort Of

is making one last mad rush into the end zone to finish the school’s new artificial turf field in time for opening day of high school football in just five days. When the pads start popping, the Spartans will be playing on a new surface at their home field, hopefully.

district officials say that the Spartans should be able to play on their nearly finished field when the lights come on Friday night.

Though the field still needs to pass inspection on Tuesday, Aug. 23, and lacks the end zone details and mid-field Spartan head, the turf itself is finally in place. District 229 Superintendent Michael Riordan said the new field is basically completed and is a “safe field ready for use.”

The inspection of the field will be done by the State Board of Education Intermediate Service Center #4, South Cook County, which repleaced the Suburban Cook County Regional Office of Education last year.

Work to finalize the field took place on Sunday as crews laid the hash marks, yardage lines and other details to put the almost finishing touches on the field. The mid-field logo and end zone letters will be laid in at a later date, which is yet to be determined.

“It's just a green 50-yard line across [the field right now], but when the product is done what will happen is in the end zones there will be block-lettered Oak Lawn and block-lettered Spartans,” Riordan said. “Then in the middle of the field will be a big Spartan head.”

As for why the field is missing those major pieces, Riordan said it was a “quality control” problem for FieldTurf, the company that developed and engineered the artificial turf surface.

“There's a delay in delivery of those pieces, so they're installing the field as is, so it's playable and passes inspection and is usable for us,” he said. “When those other parts are ready, they'll be delivered. They will come and install them and it should take them about a day.”

If the field doesn't pass inspection on Tuesday the Spartans have a back-up plan in place. If necessary, the team will host it's first home game of the year off-site.

“We have St. Xavier reserved for us for Friday night if something very disappointing were to happen,” Riordan said.