Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph..
Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
A distorted panoramic view of the new soccer/football field at Granite Dells Park. The field was completed earlier than expected to allow the Payson High football team to hold their summer camp practices there this week. See more photos on the Roundup Sports Facebook.
The new soccer/football field at Granite Dells Park.
Payson football coach Bryan Burke and MHA’s Kenny Evans.
A Longhorn makes a one-handed catch during a receiving drill at Granite Dells Park on Wednesday, July 13, 2022.
A Longhoron makes a catch during football summer camp at Granite Dells Park on Wednesday, July 13, 2022.
This crew made sure players and coaches had enough water during the hot week of football camp.
A distorted panoramic view of the new soccer/football field at Granite Dells Park. The field was completed earlier than expected to allow the Payson High football team to hold their summer camp practices there this week. See more photos on the Roundup Sports Facebook.
The new soccer/football field at Granite Dells Park.
Payson football coach Bryan Burke and MHA’s Kenny Evans.
A Longhorn makes a one-handed catch during a receiving drill at Granite Dells Park on Wednesday, July 13, 2022.
A Longhoron makes a catch during football summer camp at Granite Dells Park on Wednesday, July 13, 2022.
This crew made sure players and coaches had enough water during the hot week of football camp.
Kenny Evans sat in the stands and watched as Payson High football players tested out the new football/soccer field at Granite Dells Park on Monday morning.
“The thing I enjoyed most was watching these kids,” said Evans. “They were just having a ball out there, running and diving and falling on the turf.
“I didn’t do that when I was in high school. That was no fun at all. They did a bounce meter for this field and it exceeded every single parameter that we had for it. So, the kids are able to run out there, they’re able to dive and not end up with skinned elbows and twisted ankles.
“That’s very important, especially in football where you’re trying to teach these kids to lay out and give up their body for the good of the team.”
Evans is president of the MHA, the nonprofit foundation behind the building of the new park on Payson’s east side.
Like the football players Evans watched, the MHA stepped up and delivered when PHS football coach Bryan Burke called MHA Chief Executive Officer Jennifer Smith to inquire about the possibility of the Longhorns using the new field to practice during their July 11-14 summer camp.
The PHS football field is undergoing maintenance to get it ready for the upcoming fall season that kicks off on Aug. 19. Official practice starts on July 25.
But the Longhorns must stay off the field until Aug. 1.
Payson is hosting two other high school teams this week — Glendale Cactus and Tempe, who spend the week in Payson to escape the brutal Valley heat. There are two artificial turf soccer/football fields at Rumsey Park. But with three teams practicing all week, the Longhorns needed a third field.
During camp, coaches install plays for the upcoming season and hold seven practices over four days, two-a-day the first three days and a final practice on Thursday.
The players sleep in the PHS gym for three nights. The other teams utilized Rim Country Middle School and Wilson Dome to sleep in.
The teams got together for 7-on-7 passing games at Rumsey Park the first couple of nights.
But Burke wasn’t sure if Payson would be able to hold its camp this year before he called Smith.
The field wasn’t scheduled to be finished until this fall, with the parking lot next to it not set to be ready until near the expected completion of the park next spring.
But Smith and Evans called an audible and made it possible. They moved things around and focused on getting the field ready for the football camp.
So, the Longhorns got to practice on the new field during their camp, which started on Monday and wrapped up on Thursday.
“We are absolutely blessed in our community to have organizations like MHA and people like Kenny Evans and Jennifer Smith and all the people involved that make things like this happen,” Burke said.
It’s a state-of-the-art playing surface by Field Turf. A softball field is also going into the park, which will feature a lake.
“This whole park project is going to be fantastic for our community,” Burke said. “This field is absolutely beautiful. We have a full professional-sized soccer field with extended sidelines with hash marks and numbers, which for us is beautiful. It’ll help us with teaching our endmarks and things like that. And it kind of opens things up for us with like youth games, things like that to have actual football games and soccer games here.”
Burke said the PHS football field just needs time to be ready for the season.
“At the beginning of summer we did a little surgery on our field trying to continue to improve the crown,” Burke said. “It’s been a constant project and every year we’re trying to limit traffic as best we can. We have a maintenance department that works very hard on it, but it just gets a lot of foot traffic during the year. It’s on us to stay off it as much as possible.
“So, we got a hold of Jennifer Smith and explained our situation and she moved mountains to get us here on time. We feel spoiled.
“We’re still in a construction zone. But because the people in our community are so willing to step up and help, they made it happen. They had people working through the Fourth of July weekend. They got the goalposts hung up (three days before camp started). They were still leveling our parking lot Saturday afternoon. So they worked until the very last minute to get it ready for us.”
Evans said the MHA just did the right thing.
“We had four different construction crews here from as far away as Seattle, Wash. working on other parts of the project here,” Evans said. “So, really, the site was closed.
“We got a call from Coach Burke telling us that they’d had an emergency pop up and that the field over there was being renovated and they had no place in town to practice.
“So, we sat down with our contractors, with our primary general and said, ‘what can we do to try to ready this site so we can having parking and so we can get kids in here and give them an opportunity?’
“So, this was a one-off opportunity for us to kind of stop construction here and meet the emergency need of a ball team here in the town.”
It’s a unique field, Evans said.
“We ended up putting down five inches of No. 57, basically thumb-sized rock,” he said. “Then on top of that we put down a special layer and on top of that the fabric and on top of that the natural field turf.
“So, it’s a very comprehensive process so that we can harvest all the water out from under this. We want to capture and preserve and re-use this water. So, water off this site and off the softball field and off the entire facility, is being captured, used in the lake, stored in the lake and then used to irrigate the plantings and the trees and the grass.”
Burke couldn’t be happier with the quality of the field.
“This is as good a turf as you can get,” Burke said. “MHA went all out. If we played a game here, we’d be playing on one of the best surfaces in the state.”
But, there are no plans for the Longhorns to play any games on the new field, which currently doesn’t have lights and only very limited seating and is located in a construction zone.
Burke is thrilled to have so much support from the MHA and the community.
“This is a great option for our guys,” the coach said. “As far as playing surfaces go, this is the best turf you can get. And you come out here, it’s a beautiful area, you’ve got untapped forest behind us, you see the Granite Dells and people in the neighborhood driving by honking and showing support. It’s great. This is what living in a small town, coaching in a small town is what you kind of dream of.”
Evans said the MHA has been getting lots of calls from people who see the football players using the field and wanting to get on either it or the softball field that’s not finished.
“Frankly, we’ve had a real challenge in that once people saw that we were allowing the football team to use the field, we suddenly had calls saying, ‘hey, we want to schedule the field,’” Evans said.
“We said, ‘Wait a minute — this was a one-off. It was an emergency that wasn’t the football team’s fault. This was created by a set of circumstances they had no control of.’
“So, we’ve taken a deep breath and have done some things that we would not normally do to allow them to use the field because of the need that was here.
“But in terms of regular use and scheduling, it’s clear from the calls we’ve had since people started seeing something happening here that there’s not just a need, there’s a critical need for fields like this in the town.”
Contact the reporter at kmorris@payson.com
Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.
Click on 'Photo Galleries' header to see a variety of photo galleries
Click on 'Videos' section header to see a variety of new videos
Click heading above to view poll history
Your account has been registered, and you are now logged in.
Check your email for details.
Invalid password or account does not exist
Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password.
An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the e-mail address listed on your account.
Your purchase was successful, and you are now logged in.
A receipt was sent to your email.