Arena crews roll out welcome for af2 team

Opening night for the Spokane Shock is more than two months away, but the Arena was ready for some football last week.

With few open dates before the Shock’s arenafootball2 season opener in late March, Arena crews went through a dress rehearsal last week, setting up the field, goal posts, nets and padding to gauge how long the transformation will take.

Crews put the artificial turf down three different times, trimming installation time from four hours to one hour.

“The whole thing is about an eight-hour process,” Spokane Public Facilities District Executive Director Kevin Twohig said. “It looked really good. I don’t know if it could have gone any better.”

The Shock purchased numerous items months ago from the af2 Bossier-Shreveport Battle Wings. Spokane bought the artificial turf that was used in the Arena Cup played in August in Bossier City, La. The end zones have the Battle Wings’ logo so Spokane is purchasing new 8-yard end zones featuring Spokane’s logo.

Spokane also bought goal posts, netting and the padding for the dasher boards that surround the playing field.

The turf is in 5-yard sections and attaches via overlapping Velcro flaps, Shock majority owner Brady Nelson said. There were no problems with stability and the surface is soft and somewhat pliable, Nelson added.

“It became more of a reality when we started selling tickets, but once you see the turf down and the nets up it gets you really excited,” Nelson said. “It makes you want to run around on it actually.”

The setup for arena football is fairly compatible with hockey, Twohig said. The dasher boards stay up for both sports, but the rounded corners of hockey give way to square corners for af2. That requires modest seating changes near the corners.

“The most time-consuming process is moving seating sections around because they are very complicated with a lot of moving pieces,” Twohig said.

There figures to be some overlap between the Spokane Chiefs’ hockey season and the Shock’s 16-game schedule. WHL playoffs begin following the Chiefs’ regular-season finale March 18. The Shock’s inaugural game is March 30 at the Arena.

Twohig doesn’t anticipate any problems.

“We’ve had basketball and hockey on the same day in this building,” he said. “Football is easier than basketball because in basketball you’re moving more seats around.”

The Shock’s turf, goal posts, netting and padding probably will be stored in the Arena during the season and at a nearby storage facility the rest of the year.