In the Spring of 2013, I met with some prominent members of the US Women’s National Team. As an avid supporter of theirs and lover of the World Cup, I was eager to offer my still-developing expertise to assist in the efforts to have the World Cup venues replace synthetic turf with grass. Fields systems resemble the USSF Presidential election in that they aren’t impossible to understand but they are significantly more complicated than meets the eye. I knew that the players couldn’t focus their efforts on the nuances of the fields but they could create the conditions to force FIFA and the LOC to say “no” as opposed to trying to convince or sue them to do the right thing.

That November, I was running through an airport trying to catch an earlier flight to Orlando. I was on a mission and I was nervous. I was always nervous when I knew that high-profile games were being played on our fields. I was more nervous when it was my friends. The idea of one of them tearing an ACL or getting a concussion petrified me. Making the earlier flight meant that I would have time to get to the stadium well before the events of the day began and I could do what I had done on numerous occasions during that first year, inspect the field, check infill depths, have a conversation with the groundskeeper to top off or even out certain areas where crumb rubber tends to pool, if necessary. The staff in Orlando were top class and I wasn’t expecting any issues, but I’d be more comfortable once I saw for myself.

I made the flight, I rented a car, drove straight to the stadium and arrived around 10am. Kickoff was at for 3pm. I was escorted to the Stadium Managers office. I had met him before and greeted him while we waited. I was told that per the contract with US Soccer, that anyone on the field had to be approved. I knew the operations staff at US Soccer knew me. I had explained why I was there. I was there to help. I was there to prevent what would unfortunately come to pass in the high-profile cancellation of a match at Aloha Stadium [that turf was not manufactured by the company I worked for] in December of 2015.

The USSF operations staff member, called me “unprofessional” and I was sent away without inspecting the field. This type of behavior doesn’t surprise me in soccer any more. Is it illogical? Absolutely. But many in soccer view protecting their fiefdoms as more important than their common sense. I could have called Sunil or Dan and made it an issue but my aim was not to stir the pot, it was to do everything in my power to ensure that the players were playing on the surface in the best possible condition it could be in. I let it go. Fortunately, there were no issues with the field that day or any other time I would visit that stadium.

The field in Orlando is a crumb rubber field built over an aggregate stone base. This is the most common construction of fields across the United States in the past 20 years. What makes the field in Orlando different is that it has a texturized layer of fiber designed to help lock the crumb rubber in place. This reduces the splashing of the infill which leads to inconsistency in the surface. This is a similar construction to what both the men’s and women’s national team played on in Chattanooga in recent years without incident.