Phong Ly / The Collegian
When thousands of Fresno State faithful cram into Bulldog Stadium for a football game that will last a little over three hours, few realize the hours it takes for the game to even be possible.
On the Tuesday through Friday preceding each game day, the Fresno State Athletic Facilities and Events staff is busy working nine-hour days prepping the Jim Sweeney Field turf with roughly 200 gallons of red, white, blue and green paint.
Director of Events Nate Wills heads up a facilities crew that exhausts four days in order for the ‘Dogs to have a freshly-painted surface to battle on. The process is no simple task however, and Wills’ crew has a strict agenda in order for the finished product to be up to par.
“Typically we wait to put down logos until after,” Wills said. “Basically we’ll start with laying out the perimeter of the field, the corners, to make sure they are square with the correct measurements. Then we’ll do the outline of the exterior of the field, string the lines across the field, and do the hash marks and numbers. After that, we’ll start filling in the checkerboard end zones. After that, we’ll do the rough layouts of the different logos we have on the field, like the Bulldog, or the V or the Centennial logo we have down this year.”
The mid-field Bulldog is a combination of 15 stencils, each measuring 20 feet. Likewise, the Western Athletic Conference and Centennial logos are also stencils. The checkered end zones, which have been regarded as the hardest part to create, are laid out by string and hand painted.
While Wills does not actually participate in the labor, he has two coordinators, Alex Cordova and Jason Holtz, along with a handful of student workers who manage the painting and take plenty of gratification in their work.
“It looks pretty good,” Cordova said. “I watch all the other games [around the country], and as a facility guy I catch all the imperfections of the other fields so I make sure I catch any of my imperfections. I take a lot of pride in it.”
Although mistakes are rare, Cordova said he and the staff have run into a few miscues with errant paint spray. But since the paint is water-based, the paint can be washed off if caught early enough, or painted over with green paint under certain circumstances.
Catching imperfections may be hard to come by in the coming years, however, for Cordova and the rest of the events staff. The school is currently raising funds to install FieldTurf which is a permanent, artificial surface, in Bulldog Stadium.
Head football coach Pat Hill said the fundraiser has acquired around $500,000, or half of the needed funds to facilitate the project. Although the field turf would essentially mean much less labor for Wills, Cordova and Holtz to account for, their jobs would be secure and there would still be work to be done.
“It wouldn’t necessarily be better but it would save us a lot of time,” Wills said. “Two of our fulltime employees would then have basically three whole days during a game week where they could be helping out in other areas and doing other things to get ready for a football game.”
But for the time being, the natural surface remains, and the game-week preparations will continue for such staff as 23-year-old Chris Aguirre, a recent Fresno State graduate. Aguirre said the most difficult part of his field-preparation position recently has been the heat, but the end result is worth the effort.
“You put basically your sweat, hard work and blood into it for three days for basically one night when 40,000 fans come to see the checkered end zone and the bulldog logo at midfield,” Aguirre said. “You do get a sense of pride when you see the field brand new with everything completed on it.”