A dream of 20 years will be realised at the St Andrew’s School Bloemfontein when the school not only gets its own astro hockey field, but also becomes the first to house a wet and dry astro turf in Africa.
The project took off on Monday (17/07) when learners helped Roland Rudd, Saints’ principal, to remove a large patch of grass from the Cabbage Patch rugby field, where the brand new hockey field is now being built.
The grass that was removed was donated to the Relebeletse Primary School in Phase 4, Bloemside, as part of Saints’ Mandela Day celebrations.
Rudd said Makalo Mohale, MEC for Education, and December Moloi, district director of Motheo, had identified Relebeletse as part of their Beautification Project for underprivileged schools in Mangaung.
Saints, one of Bloemfontein’s oldest schools, is celebrating its 160th anniversary and launched its plans to build the state-of-the-art waterless astro on Monday. To celebrate the joint effort, Mohale and Moloi joined the staff and sponsors for a coctail function at the school.
Dean Stokes of the Trompie Group, which was appointed as the construction company for this project, explained that they were working with a German supplier who had already installed eight similar Olympic standard astro fields internationally.
“The carpet will be blue. This astro can function as a wet or dry surface,” he explained. “The Poligras Paris GT zero Dry is the first ever climate-neutral synthetic hockey turf that also offers optimal playing properties, even without water.” He explains that it can be used professionally in ‘dry’ conditions. It fulfills the official requirements of the International Hockey Federation (FIH) for synthetic hockey fields that does not need to be watered prior to use.
St Andrew’s will be the first school in South Africa to have a turf of this nature – setting the benchmark for all other schools and future astro turfs to come.
“This is a project that we have been planning for a long time,” Rudd said.
“Now we will be able to build an astro with the newest specifications. We hope that it will provide opportunities not only for school teams, but national teams as well.”
