Tigers' next 'home' game to be at Whittell

The Douglas High School football team will play in Douglas County for the first time of the 2006 season next week against South Tahoe.

Unfortunately for the Tigers, it still won't be at home.

Douglas will take on South Tahoe Oct. 5 at 2:30 p.m. at Whittell High School in what will be the Tigers' last technical home game until the Oct. 26 season finale against Wooster.

For those that may be doing a double-take at their calendars, that game will be played on a Thursday.

"Hopefully we can get the game in before the sun goes down," Douglas athletic director Jeff Evans said. "Playing it that early in the day was the only way we were going to be able to do it."

The freshman and junior varsity squads will take on the Vikings the day prior at Carson High School.

Douglas is still holding out hopes for playing the Wooster game at home.

Crews have been out at the high school over the last two weeks reworking the soil in order to make sure it will be durable enough to support the artificial turf waiting to be installed.

Groundwork is expected to be completed by the end of the week. Sportexe, the company installing the turf, has promised the school two installation crews to expedite the completion of the field.

In related news, Sportexe has denied responsibility in the delays with the installation saying that they did not mis-measure the initial turf order, as previously reported in The Record-Courier. Instead, a separate turf manufacturer made an error in handling Sportexe's order, thus causing the wrong rolls to be delivered.

A representative from Sportexe said the delay is due to the ground not being prepared properly by the subcontractor.

"We had an installation crew out there in July to look at the site and they said things appeared to be going well, but they never physically signed off on anything official," Sportexe representative Matt Smith said. "When we got there to put the turf down in August, the base was not up to specifications.

"There would have been a delay with the turf being the wrong size, but that became moot after the base wasn't ready.

"The delay has nothing to do with Sportexe. All we've been contracted to do on this project is install the turf. The project itself is being run by a separate engineering firm."

Douglas plays at North Valleys tonight at 7:30 p.m.

-- Joey Crandall can be reached at jcrandall@recordcourier.com or at (775) 782-5121, ext. 212.