Ford Festival Park being dried for the U.S. Open Grass Volleyball Tournament
The U.S. Open Grass Volleyball Tournament, scheduled to be held at the Ford Festival Park in Oshkosh, has experienced a change of plans recently as the wet grounds will not be any less soggy in two weeks time. The officials are taking measure to dry the
moisture before the teams show up for the tournament.
The event is expected to bring in a huge influx of people to the grounds. In order to provide a good venue to both the 12,000 spectators as well as about 3000 volleyball players that will be heading towards the park in the next couple of weeks, the workers
at the grounds are working overtime to get the courts ready for play.
The rains that Oshkosh has witnessed were some of the heaviest in the region. They already interfered with the Country USA music festival that was held at the park the previous week. Despite the rains, 150,000 people turned up at the festival, which lasted
for five days.
According to the weather forecast, it is expected that the area will experience sunny days today and tomorrow. However, thunderstorms are expected to occur on Friday again, adding more water to the already wet grounds.
Dan Liebhauser, who is the promoter of the event, said that sand and wood chips were being made use of in order to reclaim the land where there standing water. Other than that, the workers are also going to be making use of equipment for the purposes of
making the ground harder.
The founder and director of the tournament, Tom Galecke, made the following statements about the conditions of the grounds: "When you get rain and it dries it becomes like concrete, and we have a lot of professional volleyball players coming in, and if they
have an uneven surface it does increase the risk of a turned ankle."
In order to avoid any such mishaps from taking place, Galecke has decided to shift the volleyball courts to a safer location. The area is a 40 acres piece of land that was not made use of during the country music festival and subsequently is in a better
position to hold the volleyball event then the rest of the 300 acres.
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