How a football field was made at Wichita’s Riverfront baseball stadium for title game
The final touches are being put on a month-long transformation from turning the baseball field at Riverfront Stadium into a football field, ready to host the Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference championship game.
History will be made 1 p.m. Sunday when the $75 million downtown ballpark will host its first non-baseball event, as two top ranked teams square off for the Jayhawk title in No. 8 Hutchinson and No. 11 Garden City.
Wind Surge head groundskeeper Ben Hartman believes the spectacle of the field alone is worth the $15 ticket to watch a championship football game.
“Honestly, looking at the finished product is my favorite part,” Hartman said. “When you’re putting it together in chunks, especially with all of the work, you kind of get lost in the moment. To now be able to take a step back and look at it completely done, it’s really cool to look out there and see a football field on a baseball field.”
Hartman and his Wind Surge crew began working on the project the final week of October, removing the dirt that made up the pitcher’s mound and parts of the infield, then laying down a thick layer of sod to let grow.
The final steps, completed this week, was painting all of the lines on the football field and figuring out how to set up goal posts, the first time in his career Hartman had been charged with that task.
The biggest challenge during the process? The weather, Hartman says.
“As a groundskeeper, you like to be in control of everything, but weather is something you can’t control,” Hartman said. “You have to play it as it comes and ride with it. It’s a challenge to get grass to grow this time of year, but we’ve been fortunate to come out the positive side this time.”
Both teams will be able to practice on the field on Saturday, as Hutchinson and Garden City prepare for a rematch of the Oct. 2 game that the Blue Dragons won 24-16. After losing three of five games to start the season, although one was reversed to a win following a Butler forfeit, Hutchinson, the defending national champion, has won four games in a row and outscored its two playoff opponents 119-0.
The unique platform for the conference championship game wouldn’t have been possible without Hartman, who was more than willing to take on the challenge.
“I’m all for it and you’re not going to hear that from a whole lot of groundskeepers,” Hartman said. “We spend an insane amount of time that people don’t realize to upkeep the baseball field, getting it perfect day in and day out. To do something like this, there’s a lot of wear and tear and you’re going to mess your field up and it’s going to take some time to recover and get it back right. A lot of groundskeepers want to protect their field.
“You talk to me during baseball season and I’m probably the meanest guy out there because I’m protecting my field, but I do enjoy doing these extra events because it’s a different challenge. It’s just fun to be able to prove that you can do it.”
While it did pain him to tear up what he considered his masterpiece, a field that had no problems during the debut season of the Wichita Wind Surge, Hartman said there will be plenty of time to restore the field after Sunday’s championship football game in time for baseball season in mid-March.
“We still have some time to get it back right,” Hartman said. “But the other issue is that you’re not really growing grass (during December to February). So there’s some tricks that we’re going to have to do to speed the process up and get it done.”
Hartman hopes Wichita sports fans will come out for Sunday’s game.
“We need this place to be packed,” Hartman said. “This is a special deal where no one has seen anything like this before here. The stadium is still new and it’s the first time a non-baseball event has been here. There’s a certain cost of doing something like this, so I would like to see the fans come out and prove that this was worth doing.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
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