All fields at the Soccer park are finally fully irrigated

The city of Steinbach Soccer park has been enjoying a great season of use and Parks and Rec Department Manager says, they’d like to keep the fields in tip-top shape whether it’s a dry or wet summer.  

Russ Dyck says they’ve been doing maintenance work on the soccer fields for the past several weeks.  

“We're adding irrigation to the last field of the five soccer pitches. We installed underground irrigation a number of years ago on the first field, our main field, and then in subsequent years we've been adding to that to get the entire park irrigated fully. Currently, there's a contractor working on that last soccer pitch to get in-ground irrigation installed.” 

Dyck says it takes a lot to get the fields into great playing condition. “Grass is a growing organism and so it keeps growing and we have to mow it of course, and with wear and tear, if it isn't maintained properly, irrigated and so forth, it's not growing but it's dying. So we want to make sure that it's in great shape, recuperating after use and so forth.” 

He says this season, rain hasn’t been an issue, but in a drier year without irrigation the fields would show wear and tear much more substantially. Dyck continues, putting irrigation on all the playing fields has been in their plans all along, not only to help keep the fields in top condition, but it’s also easier on city parks staff who don’t have to move sprinklers around anymore.  

Besides keeping the turf in good condition with irrigation, Dyck says they also need to make sure the fields get fertilized at least a couple of times a year.

Steinbach Soccer Park irrigation system is being installed on fifth and final soccer pitch. 

When it comes to the other summer sports in Steinbach, he says the baseball diamonds and football fields in the city wintered very well and now with the rain, there hasn’t been a problem keeping them green.  

“Things are drying out a little bit more now, as it was a challenge on maybe one or two of the baseball fields with them being saturated with all the rain we had in spring. But I think that's starting to come around now, but yeah, generally speaking, I think our fields are in pretty good shape. There's always ongoing maintenance with grass and it needs to be maintained to have a safe playing surface.”