Reply to Hearst Playground story in Current

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes, absolutely.

It's poor planning. These people think fields get used for sports on Saturday morning and are vacant the rest of the time so the grass can recover.

What they don't get is that the field has Salvadorans playing soccer on it from morning until dusk. Every day.

That's why they're mud holes [/quote]

Other fields may have Salvadorans playing soccer on them from morning to dusk but that is definitely not the case with Hearst which is mostly unused except for some Saturdays in the spring and fall.

And FWIW I doubt too many of the neighbors of the pool have any idea where a field that has Salvadorans playing soccer from dawn to dusk even is.[/quote]

I've been at Hearst on a Sunday afternoon when there was a men's game going on and the dominant language was Spanish. Can't say if they were Salvadoran.

But the broader point is true that the field is ruined from overuse. Do a Google search for grass athletic field recommendations, and you'll see the standard advice is to limit use to no more than 20 hours in any week and no more than 20 weeks a year of that. During the spring and fall Hearst is used by organized activities about 40 hours a week -- 4 hours after school on weekdays and all day on the weekends. Each season is ten weeks. On top of that is the unorganized use, the pickup games and dog walking. There just is no way that grass can grow under that use load.[/quote]

It matters less to me that many of the adult users who use the Hearst field hard seem to come originally from Central America, than that many seem to live in Maryland now based on the license plates on their cars.  Should DC maintained facilities suffer from overuse from those who largely don't live in Washington?[/quote]

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