Remember when it rained ... Every Friday
Clinton was one of the last of the big-time programs to hold out for artificial turf
During the 2009 season it seemed to rain every Friday. By the end of the regular season there were some concerns the Clinton Dragons couldn’t be allowed to play on their home turf by the TSSAA.
Home.
Clinton High School’s home football field is not on the school’s grounds.
It’s a rarity, though not uncommon. Just down the road, Oak Ridge High School plays its home games away from the ORHS campus — at Blankenship Field.
Until the 1968-1969 school year, Clinton City Field was “sorta” on the campus, sitting across the street from where Clinton Middle School is today.
In 1968, the current CHS campus at the corner of Hillcrest Street and Dragon Drive was opened.
And like Blankenship Field, the Dragon home stadium was one of the last holdouts in the Knoxville area to switch to an artificial surface.
While Oak Ridge replaced its grass surface in 2019, Clinton’s change came in 2021. The biggest difference was that Oak Ridge’s transformation was completed pre-pandemic.
When work on the Clinton City Field began, it was snagged by delays in getting material and by worker shortages.
Work began in early May 2021, but was not completed until the third game of the 2021 season.
And that game was against Oak Ridge.
Getting artificial turf was not a given for the Dragons until 2021.
While other teams were making the switch the city of Clinton steadfastly said grass was good enough.
A lease agreement between the city of Clinton and the Anderson County School System changed that.
In spring 2021, the city of Clinton agreed to lease the Anderson County School System the football field and the baseball diamond at the Anderson County Fairgrounds for $1 a year for 25 years.
The city would split the cost of maintaining those fields, but the school system agreed to pay for a new turf surface at the football field.
The artificial turf requires “less maintenance,” and the playing surface maintains its integrity throughout the season.
If you wonder what “maintains its integrity” means, think back to the 2009 season.
That was the year the Dragons rolled to a 10-0 regular-season record and stormed through a first-round playoff game before losing to Anderson County High School. That was what some folks still call “the greatest game ever played” between the two schools.
But Clinton City Field started showing some problems by week five of that season.
It was a wet fall in 2009. It rained, it seemed every Thursday and Friday night during the 2009 season, or Thursday and Friday morning, or Wednesday, Thursday and part of Friday … Some combination was hitting Clinton every week.
By Week Three of the season, Clinton home games started being referred to as “Mud Bowls.”
When the Dragons hosted North Carolina’s T.C. Roberson High School, it stormed.
The game was delayed for about 90 minutes and the teams actually did play in a mud bowl.
What compounded the troubles with that game is that it hadn’t rained earlier in the day, and once it started pouring, there was no way for the visitors to travel back to North Carolina and then come back Saturday.
And Roger Houck, who was director the Clinton Parks and Recreation Department, had his hands full.
“This is by far the worst I have seen during my time here,” he told The Courier News at the end of the regular season.
“The boosters club has found some tarps we can cover almost the entire field with, and that will help if it rains again. We have rolled the field six times and expect to roll it a couple of more times. Remember, the stadium is built in the lowest elevation of the city. It was a swamp 100 years ago. People used the spring for their water supply.”
There was talk of moving Clinton’s second-round home game away from Dragon Stadium.
That talk that was short-lived.
“No way,” CHS Head Coach Andy Shattuck said.