A little over a year ago, John F. Wiley Stadium sat under nearly eight feet of water due to local flooding. On Jan. 12, the flood waters returned.

With a mixture of forecasted rain and melting snow, Purman Run, a tributary that runs directly east of Waynesburg University’s football field, spilled over its banks and onto the field. The field, which sits in a flood zone, was replaced last summer following the damage of the flood in December 2016.

According to Terry Sattler, director of Facilities Planning and Management, the water only reached a couple inches deep over the field.

“We did have a flooding situation where water from Purman Run did back up and cover the entire field,” Sattler said. “It only got a couple inches deep on the field and once the water receded it drained away.”

Last year the flooding required the entire football field to be replaced, however Sattler said this time only marginal damage took place.

“There was no physical damage to the field,” Sattler said. “We may have lost a bit of the rubber material that is an infield product of the new field, but moving forward [there] was no physical damage.”

Moving forward, Sattler said the company which originally installed the new field will do a ‘sanitary clean’ as well as a ‘regrooming’ of the field to return it to a playable state as soon as weather permits.

When the new field was installed over the summer, part of the project included enhanced drainage to the field. During installation, Sattler said they realized the center of the field was one of the weakest points.

“As part of [a] testing process that we did last summer, we noticed that pretty much the drainage on the center of the field was slower than the rest of the field,” Sattler said. “We dug out several inches of the old gravel that was in there and replaced it with new gravel.”

With reinforced drainage on the field, Sattler is pleased with how the field handled the flooding from Purman Run and said everything worked the way ‘it was supposed to.’

With the football field in a flood zone, Sattler said it is uncertain if consistent flooding will continue. Given the uncontrollable environmental factors that lead to flooding, Sattler said the emphasis is on the factors that can be controlled – such as keeping stream beds clear.

“We might go through multiple years of when we don’t have any flooding on the field and we might go through years where we have flooding more than once in the same year,” Sattler said. “It’s really dependent on a number of environmental things and even what the impact of the stream beds are. We have worked with the borough to clean up Purman Run to make sure the flow…doesn’t [create] a flood issue.”

With a cleaning process set to take place during clear weather, Sattler said there would be no other changes made to the football field and is confident it will be in playable condition in time for the start of spring sports.