New Cougar Stadium earns sparkling review

ROHNERT PARK

I took a 360-degree look around at Rancho Cotate High School’s new athletic facility Wednesday and it was a sensory overload.

Here’s a grandstand that doesn’t have one shoe mark on it.

There’s a concession stand that doesn’t have one food odor.

Here’s paint that’s not faded, chipped or scratched.

There’s walkway cleaner than mountain air.

Here’s a football field that looks like a painting; you want to take it home with you.

This is what $5 million can do to you: You want to take your shoes off when you enter the stadium and wear white gloves when you pick up your hot dog.

NOW THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT!

That, or approximately something like that, was what Henri Sarlette yelled at the top of his lungs this past Monday at 3:30 p.m. The school’s track team was at the other end of Cougar Stadium. The team shot a glance at Sarlette, Rancho’s athletic director. Sarlette was beaming. They beamed back.

“It finally hit me,” Sarlette said.

Here it was and all that was glistening did seem like gold. The football team no longer would be playing on a hump that passed for a field. The track team no longer would run on dirt that passed for nothing but dirt.

Football, track and soccer teams no longer would be playing in the Third World. This is civilization – least at the high school level – at its best.

“I would say right now Rancho does have the best high school facility in Sonoma County,” said C.J. Collins, salesman for the synthetic turf company that built the field.

A long time ago a policeman friend-of-mine said the best way to get over the anxiety and over-protectiveness of owning a new car was to back it up and put a dent in it.

Then I could relax and enjoy the vehicle.

This is Rancho’s new car. How do I back it up? Maybe pour some Gatorade on the field? Sarlette looked like he was passing a kidney stone when I said that.

“We talked to some people who have a new field over at St. Helena,” Sarlette said, “and they said Gatorade dumped on the field will turn the green turf brown. So we are not allowing any sports drinks.”

But what about the traditional dumping of the Gatorade ice bucket over the coach whose team wins a championship? “We’ll be dumping water over him now,” Sarlette said.

Gum, that’s another no-no, said Sarlette. “That’s the toughest thing to remove. Nearly impossible to get off.” For Collins, it’s sunflower seeds. Difficult to remove.

Doesn’t inhibit or affect play. But a football field could look like the floor of a baseball dugout.

Thankfully, football players don’t chew sunflower seeds; they don’t seem to have as much time on their hands as baseball players.

For the first year of its existence, the field will experience only school-related activities. It will not be open to public use. That day will come, as Rancho is a public school, but horror stories prompt caution.

Knuckleheads are among us. As those with little common sense. Sarlette and track coach John Anderson have heard enough to be convinced to go slowly in the beginning.

Doug Courtemarche is the Santa Rosa High School track coach and has filled in Anderson on some details.

“There are dog droppings on that (Santa Rosa’s) field,” Anderson said. “Parents will take their kids to the long jump pit and let them play in it like it was a sandbox.”

As Anderson was saying that, I stared at the new synthetic field. Bright green, clean, a work of art really, how could someone mindlessly take their dog onto a field like this? As Forrest Gump would say, stupid is as stupid does.

“Like how could someone burn down those buildings at the baseball field at Casa Grande?” Sarlette said.

Or burn plastic pails filled with combustibles? Courtemarche told Anderson that’s happened twice at Santa Rosa’s stadium, once in the pole vault area and once in the middle of the track.

“Burned holes right through the track,” Anderson said. “Had to be replaced.”

To be talking like this, right in front of the brand-new stadium, the brand-new track, those 3,000-new seats, Cougar Stadium deserved a better conversation. I wanted to apologize. Sorry, guy, for bringing the outside world in here. Seeing something so new, something like this, Cougar Stadium looked innocent, if you know what I mean.

“We want to keep this place as nice as we can for as long as we can,” Sarlette said wistfully.

Sounds odd, doesn’t it, to view gum as the loss of innocence? Then again, if something cost $5 million and it was your job to protect it, you’d probably ask people not to leave fingerprints, much less anything else. And to drop a nice, fat glop of mustard from the hot dog, then to step in it and track it through the stands, like it was some yellow footprint you’d follow searching like Indiana Jones for buried treasure? What about THAT, Henri? I didn’t have the heart to ask.

You can reach staff columnist Bob Padecky at 521-5490 or at bob.padecky@pressdemocrat.com