The turf at Wheeling Island Stadium, pictured after being replaced following flooding on Wheeling Island in April.

WHEELING – It’ll be a fresh new year for the Wheeling Park Patriots football and soccer teams when they being their seasons in the fall, and they will do so on a fresh new turf field after work was recently completed at Wheeling Island Stadium, new turf being laid out at the site which was damaged by floodwaters in April.

The turf, which features red and blue striping around the perimeter, ‘Wheeling Park’ emblazoned at either 50-yard line, and ‘Patriots’ printed in either end zone, impressed Park football coach and athletic director Chris Daugherty, who spoke about his schools’ new field after a football camp at WVU on Friday.

“I think sometimes when you get a rendering, no matter what it is, you’re not really sure how it’ll look in real life,” Daugherty said. “I thought the field looked better in real life, in the finished product, then it did in the rendering. It just couldn’t have looked any better in my opinion.

“That was the feeling I got today when I was at WVU, coaches around the state and even some of the WVU coaches said man, it just looks sharp. Good-looking field.”

The Ohio Valley was struck with sever flooding in April, perhaps nowhere hit harder than Wheeling Island. Wheeling Island Stadium was no exception, the previous field damaged from the floodwaters, and a layer of silt being left overtop of the playing surface.

The Patriots were close to looking into getting a new turf in the coming years, but the floods expedited that process.

“You hate to see a flood happen. But I will say, at least this flood got married up with a time where we were close to the endline of the current turf,” Daugherty said. “We were probably going to play one more year and then have talks about replacing the turf. When the flood came, it kind of sped those conversations up. Credit to our school board, our administration and our county, working so fast to put us in a situation where we’d be able to replace the turf.

“When everything looked like it was moving, I did some research and looked around the nation- what are other teams and highschools doing? I really liked the border look, and it gave us the chance to brand the field so you know exactly where you are.”

With Wheeling Island Stadium unavailable due to ongoing construction over the past few months, the Patriots’ football and soccer teams have had to improvise for their offseason training.

“It kind of displaced us, especially the football team,” Daugherty said. “That’s our home and we kind of work out of there. We’re lucky we have that combined turf soccer field up at the high school. We were able to have good productive practices on that field. We were happy with that and we’re lucky we have two turf fields in the county. We were going in the morning and the two soccer programs would come on in the evening.”

Daugherty said that there was still a little more work to do on the field, but estimated that his team would be able to use Wheeling Island Stadium again by the end of next week.

The project was not as lengthy or expensive as it could’ve been due to structural aspects of the field remaining in good condition despite the flooding.

“The good thing is we were able to maintain the gravel underneath,” Daugherty said. “That did save the school district and the county some money. We did not have to replace any gravel. That’s something, you never know until you turn the field up and take a look underneath, you really don’t know what you’re getting into. All the drains were clear, the gravel was good, so it was really just a matter of replacing the turf. That was great, we were able to cut some costs there and not redo the gravel.”

After a lot of time away from their old stomping grounds, the Patriots are eager to return- although with the renovation, ‘old’ is no longer apt.

“Kids like new uniforms and new fields and new helmets,” Daugherty said. “Having a new field generates some excitement for everybody.”