Over winter break, District 202 released a statement detailing their plans to equip each of the four high schools in the district with artificial turf in the football stadiums. The project is supposed to take place over the course of two years and cost around $6.5 million dollars, but here’s my question: what’s wrong with the fields we have now? More importantly, why don’t we spend this money on the facilities we don’t have?

The Plainfield Co-Op Swim Team, being one of the more winning teams in each of the four high schools, has been operating out of the Avery YMCA for as long as the program has been running. The YMCA offers little to no opportunity to host home meets, limits lane space during practice and cranks up the temperature of the pool to hot-tub levels, making each season increasingly more difficult to withstand. Many students that want to join the swim team can’t find rides after school, and much of the student body doesn’t even know Plainfield North has a swim team because our school doesn’t have a pool.

The press statement cites numerous reasons as to why the turf is beneficial to each and every student, being that the marching band and gym classes, as well as other sports, like soccer, baseball and softball can use the turf even when weather conditions are poor (patch.com). While these are valid reasons to get artificial turf installed, it presents the question, whats wrong with the way these sports and extracurriculars are operating now? They seem to be getting along just fine the way things are, while the swim team continuously keeps getting set back. Besides, there is no other team that consistently sends more finalists to the state tournament with the exception of track and cross country, and they both have the facilities to operate at school. The swim program, however, is the fastest growing sport in the district, with the opportunity to produce numerous top 3 finishers in the state as well as multiple state champions. It’s time to acknowledge the fact that this district needs a pool.

What is perhaps the most overlooked detail of this issue is the cost of the artificial turf versus the cost of building a pool. While it will cost District 202 $6.5 million dollars to put artificial turf on each football field, it would only cost $850,500 to build one 8-lane, 25 yard swimming pool at one school (USAswimming.org). That is less than 1/6 of the price of the artificial turf (and even if we wanted each school to have their own pool, it would still cost less than the artificial turf does by almost $3 million dollars). What the board doesn’t understand is that pools virtually pay for themselves. Between the fees it costs for swim teams and swim lessons to rent out the pool after school and on weekends, after a certain amount of years, the pool would be paid for or at least, some money would be returned.

The main issue I have with the artificial turf is not that I don’t want our schools to have it. I agree that it is beneficial and at some point, it would be a necessity. What I don’t agree with is the fact that there are so many things that we should be taking care of first.

The Plainfield School District prides itself on being a place where students can grow and have great opportunities for the future. This is why they should be focusing on ways to expand our schools, rather than limiting them to the things we already have. The school board is missing the fact that many highly respected high schools in the Chicagoland area such as New Trier, Evanston, and even Naperville offer pools to their student bodies, and if Plainfield aims to be one of the most elite high schools in Illinois, building a pool is a necessary action to take. Installing a swimming pool is useful to other sports that want to work on cross training, as well as gym classes (lets not forget that 44% of the American public doesn’t know how to swim, says Nolan Feeney for time.com). The failure to recognize these things is setting our schools back.

The decision to put artificial turf over the building of a pool is quite unfortunate for the students at Plainfield North and even more-so for the Plainfield swim team. Until a high school in District 202 gets an addition of a swimming pool, Plainfield Swimming will continue to be the (hugely successful) team without a home.