Friday Field of Dreams: Check out prep football’s only two-tone field, just don’t call it blue turf
When West Hills High decided to install a new football field, they weren’t going to accept an ordinary green turf surface. Instead, officials at the Santee, Calif. school wanted a field that reflected the school’s blue colors.
There was just one problem: a typical blue surface would be identical to the one used by Boise State, and the Broncos are very territorial about schools duplicating their Smurf Turf. In fact, the university is so defensive about intellectual rights surrounding blue football fields that it threatened to sue a Michigan school that wanted to refer to "blue turf" on its own field, because Boise State copyrighted the phrase "blue turf" in 2008.
What’s a SoCal school to do? In the case of the West Hills Wolf Pack, the school creates a field that's even more unique than Boise State's famed surface, alternating two different shades of blue.
The result is the unique surface you see above and at right, which is allegedly the only two-tone turf field in use at the high school level in America. The other two-tone fields in use can be found at Lindenwood University and Central Arkansas University, which are gray and maroon and gray and purple, respectively.
West Hills boosters also claim that they were the first to install a two-tone surface.
While Santee’s blue field is very unique, it is still sometimes confused with another blue turf field in southern California. To the north in the town of West Hills, Chaminade High unveiled a blue surface in 2011, avoiding legal disputes by officially calling its shade "Florida blue."
Chaminade may have Florida blue, but it only has one tone of turf. Of the two West Hills football programs with blue turf, the Wolf Pack wins on that count every time.
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