The wait is over — just in time for Christmas.

Following weather and work delays that forced the postponement of four boys and girls soccer games, FieldTurf crews are wrapping up application of as many as 21 protective layers to the new playing surface at the Sedona Red Rock High School football stadium Tuesday, Dec. 22, making it ready for use.

“If the weather’s good, they want to do a final walkthrough, I’m thinking Tuesday,” said John Parks, SRRHS athletic director. “It takes a long time to put all that material down.”

Up to 21 layers of a mixture of sand and pieces of differently-sized cryogenic rubber will cushion as well as weigh down a new surface of plastic grass fibers. Those layers won’t provide unwanted mementos of field play like what happened with the old surface, Parks said.

“You played ball out there, it looked like somebody mowed the grass,” he said. “They came out and put a specialcoating on there to make it last longer. 

“That didn’t work. The field kept falling apart.”

The leavings were the most visual of evidence that the artificial surface, installed by FieldTurf in 2009, was breaking down and needed to be replaced.

A three-week install was planned for November instead of six months earlier in April so as not to interfere with track meets.

But when the old surface was pulled up, Parks said, the gravel base underneath needed some work — requiring material and equipment to tighten it that FieldTurf didn’t have, Parks said.

That resulted in two weeks’ delay, postponing the Scorpions’ girls soccer home opener Dec. 10 against Wickenburg High School. 

Progress was further slowed when a winter storm Dec. 14 and 15 buried the field under two to three inches of snow.

“They had the grass down,” Parks said. “When it’s covered in snow, you can’t figure out where everything goes.”

Crews came out in freezing temperatures to dry the snow off the field and finish burning in yard-line numbers and hashmarks, but the delay postponed until January the SRRHS boys soccer games Dec. 15 and
Dec. 18. The girls’ Dec. 18 matchup with Glendale Preparatory Academy also had to be moved.

“It’s cost time,” Parks said. “I’ve had to juggle stuff around.”