Town officials say they expect nearly all playing fields to be open by Wednesday, despite recent heavy rains that have held up operations at the water tower and Farm Road fields at New Canaan High School.
Athletes on major spring sports that practice or play on grass had options as of Monday on the NCHS track and Conner fields (soccer), playing fields at Saxe (lacrosse), little league and varsity fields at Mead Park (baseball) and Orchard Field at Waveny (softball), according to the Department of Public Works.
DPW workers on Tuesday will paint out the kids’ soccer fields at Waveny, said John Howe, parks superintendent.
“Overall the condition of the fields, they are in good shape,” Howe told NewCanaanite.com. “With that said, they are still wet, even though we’ve had a few days drying and we’re almost a month later than when we regularly open up. So we are going into spring in a good position, that’s for sure. But by not being open, I know people are aggravated.”
New Canaan
The town last year was painting the fields in early March and is about two to three weeks behind this spring, Howe said, with a dry day followed by heavy rainfall.
“For us, it’s been awful trying to schedule [the work on fields] this week, but the weather lately has been great and we keep on going,” he said.
Howe added: “We are fortunate today that we were able to open up quite a few fields. We’ve reached a hump and with dry weather for rest of this week, I think we’re in pretty good shape which then gets us into normal rain delays.”
The state has said New Canaan remains under drought conditions “which potentially can affect us on how much irrigation we can do,” Howe said.
“Even though we are using wells, the [state] is holding up the water conservation [effort] and trying to reduce us to watering twice a week and potentially no above-ground sprinklers—that type of stuff,” he said.