As the Twin Cities faced sweltering temperatures this summer, student-athletes at St. Paul’s Central Senior High found themselves sidelined by a sticky situation.

In a Sept. 5 email, district Athletic Director Andrea Schmidt told Central families that the rubber pellet infill that provides cushioning for their field’s artificial turf was “not performing as intended during the extended period of extreme heat we have experienced this summer.”

More specifically, those rubber pellets were melting together into clumps which had a tendency to then stick to the cleats of anyone on the turf.

“Regardless of what the issue is, students are slipping,” Schmidt told MinnPost. She asked athletic directors at other district schools to check their infill quality, as well. 

The district closed Central’s field just days into the fall sports season rather than risk injuries and collisions. Officials then set about the frustrating task of rescheduling football and soccer home games until the field could be returned to playable conditions.

Xavi Iwaszkowiec and David Bryan are Central seniors and two of the co-captains of the Minutemen soccer team. Prior to the closure, they played one game and had several practices.

“Every time you put your foot down, you’d feel like it was kind of glue,” Bryan said. “The turf would like, stick to your feet.”

These dark green clumps, sometimes as large as a golf ball, were causing real issues.

“There were times in games where we’d have to like, rip it off our cleats so we could be able to plant better and safer,” Iwaszkowiec said.

A big player in artificial turf

Central’s turf was installed at its historic James Griffin Stadium six years ago following a $683,338 bid from FieldTurf, an industry giant based in Montreal, Canada with a primary manufacturing facility in Calhoun, Georgia. 

St. Paul’s Washington Technology Magnet School, where a new turf was added five years ago, found the same “clumping” issue on a small portion of their field, underneath the scoreboard and outside of the area of play. 

In the past four years, FieldTurf has installed fields at the district’s Highland Park, Humboldt and Johnson high schools, as well. Those fields, however, do not use the same infill as Central and Washington Tech, Schmidt said, and they have not had the same issues.

Artificial turf manufactured by FieldTurf and others has been at the center of debates around health, environmental impact and how sports should be played since it was first used in the 1960s.

Fourteen NFL stadiums currently use it, eight of them installed by FieldTurf. The company reports that 1,500 NCAA athletic programs use their turf, too. The New York Times reported last year that there are about 19,000 artificial turf fields across the country.

But the National Football League Player’s Association says 92% of players prefer playing on grass, often citing injury concerns. And in September, a game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Tennessee Titans made headlines when the turf – not made by FieldTurf – reached a surface temperature of 157 degrees, reportedly melting players’ cleats.

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In 2025, researchers at The Children’s Environmental Health Center of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai went as far as saying that the organization “strongly discourages the installation of artificial turf playing surfaces and fields due to the uncertainties surrounding the safety of these products and the potential for dangerous heat and chemical exposures.”

FieldTurf is no stranger to the complaints. In 2024, the company settled a lawsuit claiming it had concealed defects in the turf’s durability. In July, a Texas jury awarded $2.3 million to the family of an athlete who tore his ACL twice in three years on a FieldTurf field.

Lost profits and disappointed kids

Central’s field closure has hit soccer teams’ schedules hardest because they play more games than the football team. The boy’s varsity soccer team has played nine straight away games this fall and the girl’s team has played eight.

“I mean, nobody likes it. The kids are really sad,” said Jeni O’Malley, the treasurer of the St. Paul Central Sports Boosters and the mother of a soccer player.

The parents and athletes have had to deal with last-minute schedule changes, late evening practices at rival teams’ fields, and the absence of a home field crowd. Sometimes, Iwaszkowiec said, the team would show up to practice at a field where the lights hadn’t been turned on, costing them valuable training time.

O’Malley said that while Central’s staff has been great, she’s “frustrated that the district didn’t offer them more support, didn’t give them extra staffing help to reschedule all of these games.”

Then there’s the financial hit. O’Malley said boy’s soccer represents the most concessions sales of any of the school’s sports, and girl’s soccer and football are crucial as well.

“We’ve lost a significant ability to fund our programs,” she said.

FieldTurf did not respond to MinnPost’s questions regarding the cause of the clumping, the exact type of infill that was used in the affected turfs, or the replacement infill. (They currently list 11 types.)

The company did, however, inspect the fields at Central and Washington Tech, both of which are still under warranty. Beginning in mid-September, they set about vacuuming up Central’s faulty infill and replacing it with a variety that will stand up better to the heat, Schmidt said, at no cost to the district. Washington Tech will get the same treatment once the fall sports seasons are over, since the issue is not affecting the field of play.

At Central, school officials expect the field to be clump-free by October 1, just in time for the school’s Oct. 2 homecoming football game. Boys and girls soccer follow with a home game on Saturday, Oct. 3.

“It was definitely hard to get used to not playing on our turf,” Bryan said. “It might be hard to get used to getting back on our turf now.”

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