Baby powder in the air, cheering in the crowd, and victory songs from the band. This is the feeling brought only by a home football game at Erie High School, a feeling that has been slightly limited this year by the new renovations arising from the polished new Tiger Stadium.
The journey to improve the Erie track began in the summer of 2018, as part of the new construction and renovations undergoing at Erie High School. The improvement of the track occurred through a few different stages. The first was prepping the surface which took the longest. This phase consisted of checking the grading on the track. In construction and engineering, the grading refers to the base of or foundation of a structure. Some gradings are meant to have slopes and others are not. In this case, we wanted no slopes in the track. To analyze the grading, the track was flooded and drained to find water spots where the grades sloped. After doing this, unexpected slopes were found that needed to be corrected. Justin Carpenter, Athletic Director and Assistant Principal at Erie High School, explained how the directors “brought out a lot of specialists in the field, there were a lot of things wrong, we had to scrape and start over.”
Redoing the grading resulted in the delay of the original deadline. The deadline was pushed from the end of summer to into the school year as corrections were made. Once the track surface was prepped, laying the track only took eight days.
The next delay popped up with the shift in the Colorado weather. Carpenter describes how the weather impacted the track process; “It [had] to be within temperature range for a stretch of days.” If the temperature was not within this specific range, the work on the track could not be completed properly.
The final and most anticipated phase is the painting and clean up. The track will soon be dressed with vibrant new colors and a polished look . This next stage is soon to be complete. However, the anticipated finished date of the stadium is still unknown.
“We are working on the finishing touches soon, they are leading and we want it done right. They’re the experts of their field and we just need to be good followers and accommodate how we can,” explained Carpenter regarding the factors leading to the finished product. “It’s going to be done right and it’s going to be done for a long time and that’s what matters,” he added.
After an adventure of unexpected twists and delays, the Tiger Stadium will soon be a new and improved field and track, equipped for countless more years of football victories, soccer triumphs, and track successes.