By: Ethan Shen

The Los Angeles Coliseum must find innovative ways to change its terrain to fit any event in a hundred years. The groundskeepers have, for a hundred years, kept the stadium in pristine condition for events such as ice skating, ski jump, and even a military show.

Scott Lupold, the grounds manager at the stadium feels uneasy whenever something other than soccer or football comes to the Coliseum. The carefully tended grass gets smothered, torn up, or trampled every time the stadium prepares for events like NASCAR racing.

The Coliseum has needed to morph from standard grassy fields to surfaces such as dirt, ice, asphalt, and even snow. “The Coliseum wasn’t built for just one purpose,” says Frank Guridy, a Columbia University professor who studies the civic impact of stadiums and arenas. “It’s a good, old-fashioned, single-tiered facility big enough to accommodate a bunch of different things.”

The Coliseum’s history with complete redesigning dates back all the way to 1923, when it first opened. This incredible arena now uses a strategy that would be unheard of in previous times; instead of protecting the previous layer of grass, the groundskeepers roll in a new layer after every event that needed a different type of terrain.

The Los Angeles Coliseum is an amazing place, capable of changing its terrain for any event. The stadium has learned a few tricks after swapping terrain for nearly a hundred years.