Deluxe Athletics -Athletic Sports Fields | Synthetic Grass Turf | Synthetic Putting Greens

Chris Daniluk has been in the artificial turf business since 1998, previously working with SprintTurf. He said he has personally been involved in the installation of more than 500 projects and estimates that about 95 percent of his installations are for outdoor turf surfaces. The expected life of an artificial turf football field is about 10 to 12 years based on expected use at at high school multipurpose facility. Also, included in the contract with the district is a warranty of eight years and maintenance throughout that period. That means Deluxe Athletics will go to each school twice a year — before every fall and spring sports season — to clean and groom the fields.

In June, the company will begin construction on the first field at South Cobb, with Walton, Kennesaw Mountain and Pope high schools to be complete for the start of the 2010-11 school year. After their completion, installation will commence at four more schools in late summer, and will likely continue those fields into the beginning of the school year, depending upon the weather. The fields that don’t get completed this summer will be done during the winter and into summer 2011. The district and Deluxe Athletics will have all the fields finished by fall 2011.

McEachern, Harrison and Lassiter high schools already have artificial turf and have the option to use its shares of the funds to either replace their turf or install a practice artificial turf field.

Chris Daniluk worked with his previous employer to instal both McEachern and Harrison high schools’ turf fields, according to Jimmy Dorsey, athletic director at McEachern.

Dorsey, who was on the search committee to choose a company for the turf project, said he feels confident in the process the district and the committee used to find the best bidder for the current job. Dorsey said the committee, which included district Athletic Director Steve Jones, district construction chief Larry Wall, Harrison Principal Donny Griggers and others, began meeting last August and presented its top recommendations at the Feb. 10 board meeting.

Dorsey said the committee heard presentations, visited fields installed by top bidders, and considered company history and financial stability in making its decision. Dorsey said the committee chose its top four companies for the job even before knowing each company’s bid, and then chose to award a contract out of the top four, based on the highest score and the lowest bid price. Deluxe Athletics received a perfect score of 100 points on the RFP process.

Dorsey, who also helped manage the turf installation at McEachern, said the use of artificial turf could save each school thousands of dollars per year. A three-year investigation revealed that McEachern was paying about $60,000 per year to maintain real grass fields. And, with the grass fields, Dorsey said the school was only using the field about 15 to 18 times a year. Since artificial turf has been installed, McEachern uses its field almost daily. Dorsey estimated that the field cost about $500,000 to $600,000 at the time of its installation in 2003.

“I don’t know how you put a price on how much you’re going to use that field,” Dorsey said. “To be honest with you, that’s a bigger benefit than just the money that you’re going to save. People kept saying, this was a football issue, but to me, this was everything but a football issue. Because either way, football was always going to use that field anyway.”

Daniluk notes, "We are very proud of our efforts to gain the respect and confidence of Cobb County School Disctrict and, rest assured, they will get 110% effort from everyone involved with our team. We are looking foreward to a succesfull project that the community will be proud of."