Football in Muck at Pierce Muddies Repair-Cost Issue

As if being mired in a money crisis isn’t messy enough, Pierce College got some real muck to wallow in over the weekend, after flag football players turned its fields of green into muddy waters.

Worse, the football tournament Air-It-Out, sponsored by the National Football League, was supposed to bring in about $4,000 to the cash-starved campus, not leave parts of it resembling a swamp.

While most of the affected fields are not used for the school’s sports teams, some soccer classes may be affected, college officials said.

And the golf putting green? Well, its name is mud.

“I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Bob Lofrano, who teaches golf and coaches baseball at Pierce. “It’s a quagmire of mud on our putting green.”

Not to worry, says Pierce Athletic Director Bob Lyons, who, with his superiors’ approval, rented the fields to Air-It-Out.

Lyons said he was assured by tournament officials that any damage would be repaired by the Air--It--Out folks.

Reached in Dallas, the tournament’s director, Sunny Malone, offered a slightly more cautious response.

“We don’t know if we did any excessive damage,” Malone said. If so, “We would assess damage, get [price] quotes and discuss it at that time. I would love to make it good.”

Lyons downplayed the impact of the damage, saying the mud will cause “a little inconvenience for a little bit.

“We have tons of grassy area out here that got trampled down, but so what?” Lyons said. “It will come back. We have to let the thing dry out.”

Pierce President E. Bing Inocencio could not be reached for comment. The local organizer of the tournament, Chuck Price, said Lyons was the “saving grace” of the tournament, which was rained out last month and over the weekend at Balboa Park.

The park would not allow the event to proceed if the weather was rainy or the ground soggy for fear of damage to its fields, Price said.

At the last minute, Pierce College agreed to host the event Saturday and Sunday. Until the tournament grew to its current size of 500 teams of four, it had been held at Pierce.