Inside The Huskies

Husky Stadium Gets New AstroTurf Surface for the Coming Season

Eight-year-old artificial turf is removed from the previous stadium remodel.
Dan Raley|
Husky Stadium Gets New AstroTurf Surface for the Coming Season
Husky Stadium Gets New AstroTurf Surface for the Coming Season

The University of Washington is putting in new carpet at Husky Stadium. And, no Boise State or Eastern Washington wannabes, it won't be purple.

This week, workers began pulling up the old AstroTurf that was installed in 2013 during the massive stadium remodel, taking it out strip by strip, before reinstalling the latest version. 

Spring football practice for the Huskies ended on May 1, marking the end of the old artificial surface. 

AstroTurf and Seattle football go back more than a half century when both the UW and Seattle's Metro League for high school competition decided to go the synthetic route on their respective fields as sort of a test case. 

Inclement weather, with the Huskies' practice field becoming unplayable at times and the Husky Stadium grass field hard to maintain, led to the UW decision to invest in the new surface. 

On September 21, 1968, the UW became one of the first college football teams to use AstroTurf by playing on it against Rice in its season opener. That game ended in a 35-35 tie with the Huskies' Ron Volbrecht converting a 51-yard field goal off the bouncy surface with five seconds left to play

Eight days earlier, the first high school game in the nation played on AstroTurf was held at Seattle's Memorial Stadium downtown between Seattle Prep and now Kennedy Catholic. On the wet surface, Prep won 39-0 as future Husky running back Mark Wheeler rushed for 205 yards and a pair of touchdowns.

The only common denominator in these two historic games played was a preponderance of fumbles apparently caused by the sensation of playing on a spongy field. The Huskies committed five of them, losing the ball four times. The two high school teams combined for a whopping 15 fumbles. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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