Truck Doing Donuts Causes Damage To Depew Football Field

It's the time of year for high school players to be on the field under the Friday night lights, but it was headlights on the field that led to overtime for school employees, not players, in one Green Country district.

A vandal doing donuts is the talk of the town in Depew in Creek County.

The Depew stadium gates are usually unlocked to enable people to enjoy walking on the district's new track.

"We have a lot of people that come up here, we're happy to be able to do that. They get to see their tax dollars at work,” said Depew Superintendent Leon Hiett.

Early Sunday morning at about 2:30, someone in a pickup took advantage of the easy access, driving onto the football field.

"Did a couple of donuts and then just drove off,” said Hiett.

It left ruts between the ten and 20 yard lines, and an uneasy feeling for the superintendent.

"Kind of sick at your stomach, like, why would they do this,” wondered Hiett.

The school system just put up security cameras the day before the donuts, so they hope video will help investigators track down the vandal, who can then reimburse the school for costs and the hassle.

"I'll have them hauling dirt and fixing things. They can weedeat. Let them work around the school,” he said.

The timing couldn't be worse since this is the week leading up to homecoming.

With no time to re-sod the damaged field, the school leveled the ruts with sand. Now, the biggest concern is player safety.

"They're not real deep so we're confident no one will be injured or trip on it, so we feel pretty good about that,” Hiett said.

Hiett hates to think of what the field would look life if the driver spent more time on the field.

"You could have torn the whole field up and we would have been out of business this Friday,” he said.

Everything is okay for homecoming, and even though it could have been much worse, the superintendent said it's the principle of the thing that's most frustrating.

"There's plenty of pastures around here, there's gravel pits. You can take your choice of places to do donuts,” he said.

At least there is one positive note, the vandal didn't do any damage to the field's irrigation system which would have been a much more expensive problem.