Field Hockey League Considering 2 Sites for Stadium : Athletics: Moorpark College and a Camarillo school are possible locations for the artificial turf needed for Olympics training.

Anxious to build a world-class field hockey stadium to train local players for the 1996 Olympics, Ventura County’s field hockey league is considering possible sites in Camarillo and Moorpark.

The county’s Field Hockey Federation, which has produced many of the top male field-hockey players in the nation, has been negotiating for a year with Moorpark College to build an artificial-turf field next to the campus’s football stadium, college officials said.

The federation has already raised the $500,000 it needs to install a 60-by-100-yard regulation-size field of synthetic turf, officials said. Most of the money has come from grants.

Negotiations have moved far enough along that attorneys for the county’s community college district are reviewing a proposed contract with the federation.

But local field hockey organizers said they are frustrated at the slow progress of the talks.

“We’re just awful anxious to get going,” said Walt Robbins, a federation vice president.

Hoping to have an alternative site ready in case the Moorpark College proposal falls through, the federation has approached Camarillo’s Pleasant Valley Elementary School District about building an artificial-grass stadium at Monte Vista Intermediate School.

The school board will decide Thursday if it has any interest in the proposal.

“On the face of it, it’s a creative idea,” said Assistant Supt. Howard Hamilton said. “It could be a win-win situation.”

The Ventura County league, which already practices on athletic fields at Monte Vista and Moorpark College, has 600 players between the ages of 6 and 57, making it the largest field hockey organization on the West Coast and one of the largest in the nation.

Among the 60 players on the three U.S. men’s teams, 35 once played with the Ventura County group, said Lynn Ralston, assistant executive director for the U.S. Field Hockey Assn. at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

And the men’s team of 21- to 30-year-old players who will represent the U.S. in the 1996 Olympics will probably include some Ventura County athletes, Ralston said.

But these players will need to have experience playing on artificial turf to be competitive against teams from other countries, he said.

“When you go to the Olympics you’re playing on a wet synthetic surface and the ball is much faster,” Ralston said. “You get a different roll on the ball. So it is very important that the kids get to play as much as they can on the same type of surface they’ll be playing on in Atlanta.”

Field hockey, which has a strategy similar to that of soccer, is played with hard balls about the size of baseballs and sticks that are about three feet long.

For the local league, an artificial turf field would not only boost the group’s Olympics training program, it would also enhance the organization’s regular rounds of practice sessions and games, Robbins said.

Currently, the federation restricts its main playing season to the spring, when grass fields are thick and cut close.

“When an artificial turf field becomes available, we can practice more often,” Robbins said.

Because the group wants to be able to use the new field by the start of their next season in February, they hope to begin construction in October, he said.

Once the field is in, the federation plans to raise funds to install lights and stadium seating.

Ray DiGulio, vice president of administrative services at Moorpark College, said college officials and field hockey organizers have haggled over who would control the field once it is built.

As proposed, the college would own the artificial turf, but the field hockey league would have privileges to use it.

And the college would be free to use the field to establish its own field hockey program or for other sports, such as soccer, DiGulio said.

Although Pleasant Valley officials have not yet begun negotiations with the federation, Robbins said the field hockey organization may offer to renovate Monte Vista’s locker rooms in exchange for being able to install an artificial turf field at the school.

Neither field hockey organizers or Pleasant Valley officials said they are concerned about children suffering more injuries from playing on artificial turf instead of grass.

Artificial turf has received a bad reputation because of the injuries professional football players have suffered when playing on such surfaces, Robbins said. But field hockey players don’t tackle each other, he said.

And Hamilton said artificial turf may actually be safer for school children than grass.

“Kids get hurt on school grounds a lot of times because they step in a hole or twist their ankle on something that’s on the ground,” Hamilton said. “There are no holes on turf. It’s like the rug in your living room.”