I have been receiving E-mails and have been hearing area residents express their concerns in regards to the Grimsley Whirlies’ football practice field….
Hearing some reports that the team can’t even practice on the field due to its poor condition…
Hearing talk of terrible drainage, rocks showing up all over the field and just an overall poor design and construction job…
The concerns apply to the new track the encircles the football practice field at Grimsley and it all seems to go back to construction job that was done or not done, when this facility was built about two years ago…
Grimsley had a practice field right behind the tennis courts on the Westover Terrace campus and the move was made to take up the track that went around the exterior of the Jamieson Stadium football field, now known as the Joe Franks Field and the job was to move the track to a new spot down below the tennis courts at Grimsley and therefore with the track pulled up/torn down and moved out of the football stadium, the football field would be much safer without that track running around the outside of the field along the sidelines….
There is always the threat of some type of added injuries when you have a track along your sidelines….The curbing comes into play, the track itself is a surface that a football player might get slammed into as he is being run out-of-bounds….
So the move was made to move/re-locate the track and the new complex would include the track and the football practice field…
The work took plenty of time to complete and the Grimsley Whirlies spent at least parts of two seasons practicing over at the Kiser Middle School and that is not your best overall setting for your football pracitices….Much longer walk up to Kiser each day from the Grimsley field house, where the players dress out, and the walk up there is never as bad, as the walk back after a long and hard practice….
When the work was finally done/complete, or at least the Whirlies thought it was complete, the practices for football and for track moved to the new facility….
Now that they are using this field, we keep hearing it is not useable and it still needs much work and repair and there are questions if Grimsley will be able to practice on the field at all this year….
How much and what work needs to be done??? We are still waiting to hear and find out more about those questions….
Why the improper drainage, why do all of these rocks keep showing up and where are they coming from???
These are just a few thoughts and we thought today might be a good day to put it to a post…..
Any word or thoughts from those of you out there on this?
We have been hearing concerns from parents and from those in the community and were just wondering if these concerns were valid/justified, or if we were just chasing a wild goose that had been trying to cross the street over on Benjamin Parkway….
*****Should we be contacting the County, the Contractor, the Construction Company to find out who is at fault here, or is anyone at fault here???*****
Maybe they should use the baseball field like they do at Dudley.
Who constructed this?
@Panther – Mens soccer already does use the baseball field.
Got an E-mail today that said Lomax Construction had done quite a bit of construction work over at Grimsley HS in recent years and they might have part of the crew that did the Football Practice Field and Track work too….
LOL. If Lomax Construction is responsible, then why doesn’t he donate that flat piece of land behind The Shoppes at Friendly where he was going to build $1MM condos to Grimsley for a practice field?
We are getting reports this evening verifying that the Lomax Construction Company was involved and that they have offered help on more than one occasion, but the Guilford County Schools are dragging their feet..
Grimsley might have a better chance getting that field over behind The Shoppes at Friendly ready for August than they will if they wait on GCS to get this problem with the practice field and track rectified…
Right now the onus is on GCS…They have to stop dragging their feet and get this situation in order……
(There is plenty of room over on Friendly at the Shoppes, but they will need to bring in some fill dirt and get that field leveled out, but if this is going to happen they need to get on it in the morning…In a perfect world this would work, but in reality, they need to get Grimsley’s Football Practice Field in proper working order)…….
Guilford County Schools this one is for you…..
I am curious…
Who signed off on the job being complete? I imagine there being a Building Advisory Team that had a checklist to sign off on before Lomax was clear of any more work.
Typical GCS. They are clueless. Whenever they are responsible for a project at a school, it is always done half way. There are millions of examples like this all over the county. Just recently they did crappy work on the fields and tracks at Eastern Guilford, Southern Guilford, and Western Guilford. I could go on for days, but it does no good. GCS maintenance will continue to pass the buck and never be accountable. It is sad for our schools and more importantly for our student athletes they they are made to feel as if they are not worthy of nice facilities.
This from Facebook
Thanks for your support Danny and others and for those who jump to conclusions based on a news article which we all know are at best sensationalized …..shame on you. Any if you could have contacted me personally
I hate that this problem has surfaced and have worked diligently to determine the fix and will at my sole expense make the repair
Here is the story. We paid a wall contractor to design and install the segmental retaining wall. They installed the wall under the watchful eyes of soils engineers who tested the compaction hourly. Everything appeared fine during the installation of the wall and we subsequently installed the track and completed the project to everyone’s satisfaction. Almost a year later the crack appeared in the track. We paid a engineer and surveyor to study the track and measure the movement both vertically and horizontally. They measured it monthly for 6 months. We took soil boring samples and eventually found that the soil was not of the correct strength to Support the wall Lomax hired a third party engineer to design the fix. We submitted the design to the school for their approval and their engineer suggested changes and our engineer redesigned the repair again and we received that design last Friday. We have submitted that design to the school system and once they agree Lomax will repair the wall and track at our sole expense. No tax payer money. My hope is we can get design approval this week and have the track repaired and back in service in August before school starts. Call me if you have questions 336 992 7000 ext 0.
Glad to see action finally being taken. Two years to fix an obvoius problem is far too long. By the way the falling wall is only part of the probelm. The practice field is a disaster, with rocks and dirt and very little grass. I understand that it is difficult to keep a decent field with so many differnt teams using this one spot but this was just a very poor job from the beginning. If the city did sign off on the job then the fault is theirs.
The student athelets at GHS have waitied long enough for a fix. it has been many years since a home track meet couldbe held there. It should also be pointed out that booster club funds went to the removal of the old track so we all do have a vested interest in getting this corrected. Plenty of blame to go around but that solves very little. Let’s get together and fix the facilities at a great school.
Not sure what construction company did Ragsdale’s track and football practice fields but really both were unacceptable jobs. I still don’t believe they can use their track as it was built out of spec for track meets. Just a poor job of Guilford County Schools again!!
I know that GCS are real lazy when it comes to all repairs it amazes me why they pay someone to do nothing.
They need a real shake up in those jobs.
I agree with whirlie dad, glad to see action taking place. Unfortunately substandard has become the norm on Westover. Baseball had no PA and half a scoreboard all season. LAX PA announcer was relieved of duties mid season for offending people in LAX community and yet was asked to do those duties at the LAX All Star game (must not have offended that many people) and what happened to the $$ from the Page Grimsley Golf Tourney? Remember it’s still June, not to late to announce yet another Football vacancy (Hope not)