Damage to the Cownie Soccer Park in Des Moines has forced the Iowa High School Athletic Association to move next month’s state soccer tournament to alternate sites. Dave Anderson of the IHSAA says the playing fields at Cownie Park were damaged by flooding last summer.
Anderson says they have been working on the fields since March and set May 1st as the date to determine if they could use the fields. He says they decided the fields could be playable, but not of the quality they would like for a state championship.
Anderson says the tournament will now be held at Urbandale and Southeast Polk high schools as well as Valley Stadium in West Des Moines. Urbandale will host the three championship matches on June sixth. Anderson says they started contacting alternative sites in March and the member schools were willing to help out, knowing that the tournament will return to Cownie in 2010.
Anderson expects Cownie Park to be ready for next year’s tournament. He says they are doing tremendous work on the park and have been getting help from the Iowa Cubs ground crew to install drainage and sod to make the best effort to make it the best soccer stadium in the state of Iowa.
The switch of the tournament is to sites that all now have artificial turf fields. Urbandale , which will host the championship games, just opened its new field this fall. The boy’s state soccer tournament begins on June 4th.