WESTLAKE, Ohio — It's literally the foundation of the season, but keeping a high school field in tip-top condition through games, weather and endless practices is no easy task.

What You Need To Know

  • Westlake High School takes pride in turf maintenance for the football season

  • Keeping the turf maintained prevents player injury

  • Westlake High School's Jed Failor performs dragging and sweeping the turf field

We all see football players play the sport they love, but what we don’t see is the hard work that goes into keeping a field like this ready so players can go out and win games.

Jed Failor doesn’t throw a football on Friday nights, but he’s a big part of the team at Westlake High School.

“The machine, it’ll bounce, it’ll hop up and down and then you won’t get an even drag,” he said.

Failor works with the maintenance department. He’s doing something known as dragging, a process that rearranges the crumb rubber BBs on the school’s turf field, making sure the Westlake High School football field is ready to go on game day.

“So what that machine does is, it grooms it back up to its original position,” Failor said.

The drag brush fluffs up the field, removing any uneven surfaces, allowing players to maintain an appropriate balance while competing.

“It helps with players not getting hurt,” he said. “It brings that crumb rubber back up and hopefully less injuries.”

Out on the field, Failor is making sure he doesn’t miss a spot.

“Maybe an hour and a half, two hours, sometimes I’ll do it once, then I’ll come back the other way and do it again,” he said.

But dragging isn’t the only thing Failor has to do before game day. He is also in charge of sweeping the field.

“It picks up all the garbage and the trash that might get on the field that you don’t see, like paper wrappers and things like that,” Failor said.

It’s the type of time-consuming work that doesn’t always get recognized, but you’d definitely notice if it wasn’t done each week. 

“It definitely makes you feel good when you get a ‘thank you’ from an administrator or a parent or anybody,” he said. “You know they notice what you do. It’s not just, you know, a football game or the band performance, you know, they know what goes in and they see it.”

Daily practices, multiple sports, weekly games: Failor knows keeping the field green and clean is the foundation of a great season.

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