Griswold — The Griswold High School football field at its worst came on a Friday night during the 2018 season, a 14-6 loss against Trumbull for which the playing surface was one massive puddle, football coach Gregg Wilcox recalled this week.

“We played in six inches of water,” Wilcox said of the Griswold field of old. “Your cleats were underwater while you were on the field. It was just the worst game I’ve ever been on that field. It took a week for it to drain off. It just rained buckets.”

That makes the new $3.8 million complex which now stands on that site, constructed by FieldTurf, that much more thrilling for the Griswold athletes who have watched it being built over the last few months.

Standing above the stadium and looking down onto the field, the left end zone reads “Griswold,” while the opposite end zone is emblazoned with “Wolverines.” A giant, white “G,” surrounded by a yellow center circle, encompasses the space between the 40-yard-lines.

To the right stands a brand new, $86,000 scoreboard, marked with “Home of the Wolverines” in white lettering.

The Griswold football team — a cooperative unit along with Wheeler — will play its season-opener on the field Friday, Sept. 8 against East Catholic, with boys’ soccer meeting Norwich Tech on the turf on Saturday and the town’s youth football players following up on Sunday.

The girls’ soccer team gets its season-opener on the turf on Monday, Sept. 11, facing Parish Hill.

There will be a formal grand opening of the field prior to the football game.

“A turf field is just special,” said Kiyle Montigny, a running back/wide receiver/defensive back and one of Griswold’s four senior football captains. “A lot of teams years ago didn’t have turf fields. Our turf field’s really nice. I’m glad they took the time and did it for this year so that we could go out senior year on a bang. Especially to open on it, it’s definitely a great feeling.”

“It’s definitely a big upgrade,” senior captain KinKade Rubino said. “I did hear previous years that they were trying to build it. I didn’t think it was going to come this soon, so definitely exciting.”

Two years ago, with many of its players starting as freshmen and sophomores, Griswold/Wheeler finished 3-7 before turning that into a 6-4 mark a year ago with four straight victories to end the season.

Last Thursday, the day the new turf complex opened to the public, the football team practiced in its normal spot, on a grass field below the softball diamond. The players, in full anticipatory mode, then raced to see their completed new home.

“We pretty much ran down,” outside linebacker/tight end Aiden Peltier said. “We wanted to get there as quick as possible. We had a couple team pictures.

“(The old field) was just really bad quality. The game plan was pretty much the same. It just made it harder when we tried to run a play and then you step in a pot hole in the middle of the field and mess it all up.”

Athletic director Steve Cravinho said the idea to install turf began with a small group of community members and, from there, they contacted engineers.

The town elected to send the proposal to a referendum and it passed on Feb. 1. The project, which was given the catch phrase “Griswold Forward,” began with the demolition of the existing field in late March.

“It just kind of took off, grew legs and the community supported it,” Cravinho said. “The speed it was built was incredible, on budget, on time. We had tremendous support from our booster club to our families. It was just a great group effort from everybody; everybody did a little piece.”

In addition to the fall sports which benefit, Griswold’s lacrosse teams will use the turf and the track and field teams will boast an eight-lane facility.

Cravinho said he watched as the school’s athletes, who turned in a highly successful school year in 2022-23, including championship seasons for the volleyball, boys’ basketball and boys’ cross country teams, eagerly oversaw the project from a distance.

“I would see the kids at lunch going out on the patio (overlooking the field). I see them looking, just looking,” Cravinho said.

The soccer teams formerly played on a grass field above the stadium, adjacent to Griswold Elementary School, what boys’ soccer coach David Johnson refers to as the “dust bowl.”

Johnson said with a laugh that his team will no longer be able to use the field as an excuse for miscues “because it’s the perfect surface.”

Johnson and several others joked that the torn up grass fields formerly used at the school formed a home field advantage, but it’s one they’re willing to forgo for the spoils of the picture perfect swath of green they now own.

“It’s quite spectacular, especially when you look at our old field,” said Justin Blanchard, a senior midfielder and captain for the boys’ soccer team. “They started working on it a few months before the last school year ended and you can see a little balcony over there ... you can just watch as the field slowly got built and got finished. It’s kind of fun to watch. It’s kind of like a time lapse almost.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com