NorthWood High School Strengthens Athletics with Leading Field and Track Surfacing

Solutions from FieldTurf and Beynon Sports make NorthWood an ideal host for sporting events

Key Takeaways: NorthWood High School

• NorthWood High School selected FieldTurf and Beynon solutions to elevate its athletic facilities and enhance its appeal as a host for sporting events.
• New installations include a FieldTurf football field and a mini field for youth and unified sports, and a Beynon track recognized for its performance and longevity.
• The upgraded surfaces have expanded year-round training opportunities and enabled simultaneous multi-sport use without safety concerns.
• Turf and track improvements have allowed NorthWood to host sectionals, regionals, and unified sports events previously not feasible for the school.
• The combination of quality, durability, and multi-use versatility supports consistent play, injury prevention, and long-term value for the community.

When selecting new sports surfacing solutions that would make Nappanee, Indiana’s NorthWood High School an attractive home for athletic competition, the school turned to Tarkett Sports. The first surface installations were at the school’s ‘Field of Dreams’ baseball-softball complex, which used FieldTurf artificial turf.

More recently, NorthWood entrusted FieldTurf with Andrews Field—home to the Panthers’ football team—and an accompanying mini field. In addition, Beynon Sports track surfacing was installed around the field, providing NorthWood student-athletes with two leading Tarkett Sports surface solutions. Check out the video for the full story:

Edited transcript of Athletic Director AJ Risedorph discussing the surface installations at Northwood High School:

We are in Nappanee, Indiana, just 45 minutes away from South Bend. You will see a lot of buggies and bicycles when driving around our community. It’s a very conservative community, something that we cherish and hold dear. It's a very giving and supportive community.

We are blessed with unbelievable facilities. Phenomenal athletics programs, top to bottom—24 varsity programs.

The Tarkett Sports installations we have include our Andrews Field football field, our mini field for youth kids, and our baseball-softball complex, which features two baseball fields and two softball fields—all turfed. And then there is the Beynon track.

The FieldTurf has allowed us to practice year-round. We have year-round training for football within the contact periods. We host a lot more things out here than we ever have. You'll see a varsity football practice going on with cross-country running around the field at the same time. And then we might host a unified flag football game, which is pretty cool, because that's our special needs kids. And they don't have to worry about tripping over anything when they're out here running around.

Everything we have seen since installing the Beynon track has been great. It looks great, and we haven't had any issues with the track, so we're excited about its longevity, because we hear that it's going to last us a long time.

The mini field is something that our community and our head coach have wanted to bring. Most program schools are running kids out of crowded areas when hosting a football game. Kids just want to play, so we gave them a little space, and they do a lot of playing, so it's really fun to see.

Throughout the week, it's good when we're hosting smaller events. Kids go out there and play, and parents don't necessarily have to worry too much about them. Our unified flag football team practices on that field because it's very close to their regulation field, so it's been a multi-purpose field for us.

Working with FieldTurf, we were able to build our varsity baseball field, our JV baseball field, and our varsity and JV softball fields all at one time, at a reasonable cost, and we had great donor support. The design and the quality allow us to host way more than we ever have.

Most of the time, we wouldn't be able to host a baseball sectional or a baseball regional, which we have. We're hosting a softball sectional this year. We hosted unified track sectional and regional this past spring because we just got the new Beynon track installed.

It's opened up a lot of possibilities to bring people into our community that may not know where Nappanee, Indiana, is. So, it's awesome.

The way it plays, and the sightlines and, again, the multi-use of it, provide so many different variations of practice and formats of your practice rather than just: “Hey, we're going to set up our Bubba [batting cage] and do batting practice.” No, we're using every single line, every single different color shading of the turf to create new situations and practice formulas that break up the monotony.

The ability to host and provide a safe environment for our kids to be able to compete and practice. I think that tells us the story here in the next 5 to 10 years that this was done for the sake of consistency in our play, in our practice, and injury prevention. All those things are very valuable and important to our community. It would definitely be worth working with Tarkett Sports, FieldTurf, and Beynon.