From the Biggest Schools to Smaller Ones, Artificial Turf and Indoor Facilities Abound in Arkansas

Many state school districts have joined the artificial turf club with fundraising, a good bank donation here and there, and some locals giving away services to help their school and its students.

One of the largest crowds since the back-to-back state championship seasons of 2003-2004 turned out to watch a Little Rock Central Tigers football game Sept. 25 at Quigley-Cox Stadium.

With the Tigers in the throes of their longest losing streak in school history — it would reach 14 games later that night in a 28-24 loss to Van Buren — the crowd wasn’t necessarily drawn to see a Tigers game.

But then, this wasn’t just any Tigers game. It was the first home Central football contest to be played on an artificial turf, made possible partly by a large donation by a new Little Rock resident, Verizon Wireless.

However, with evergreen fields springing up all over Arkansas, along with fancy indoor football facilities for practice, the big corporate donation is the exception rather than the rule. Bentonville High School has benefited from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its national vendors and has the dreamiest athletic and arts facilities in the state. But many state school districts have joined the artificial turf club with fundraising, a good bank donation here and there, and some locals giving away services to help their school and its students.

Longtime Central High program boosters and dignitaries were on hand Oct. 2. Verizon, which provided $250,000 toward the $600,000 cost of the project to install the artificial grass, was acknowledged that night, and the players performed on what is now known as Verizon Wireless Field at Quigley-Cox Stadium.

The $250,000 donation from the cellular phone company and the $600,000 project could be termed humongous for the Little Rock School District, where former Central athletes such as NBA star Joe Johnson are leaned upon to help pay for such extras as letter jackets.

Drake Hawkins, a Central High parent, had pushed Johnny Johnson, the LRSD athletic director, for improvements to Quigley Stadium, Johnson said, and artificial turf seemed the best first step. The athletic director called on local support to help with the football field project as well as a renovation earlier this year of Kanis Park’s ballpark for district use. (Central a few seasons back built its own ball field next to Quigley-Cox Stadium, but other district schools call Kanis home.)

Steve Smith, president of the South Central division of Verizon, signed off on Johnson’s idea of donating for the turf, and the project was announced July 8, less than two months before the start of the season. Verizon acquired Alltel Corp. of Little Rock earlier this year.

“We got it finished Sept. 12, and it had to be a turnkey job with the funds paid off,” Johnson said. “We didn’t have the luxury some of the other districts have, where they had fundraising still going on. We had to have ours funded and paid for in a two-month period.”