How do you get the sports field your child’s sports team plays on line striped? On publicly-owned sports fields such as schools or municipalities, fields are usually striped by a full-time salaried employee on the building and grounds crew. That is not always the case with privately-owned facilities such as clubs or private schools. In these cases, the lining of fields is done many times by volunteer parents.
(See bottom of page for pricing)
Volunteer parents and their spirit of community are powerful forces. However, they do have some issues:
- Even if they do a great job, which in most cases they do, it leads to a great deal of burnout for the parent. Not only do they have to travel to games for their child but they have to line fields when they get home from work. It’s very tough to maintain this commitment over the course of one season let alone many seasons. Parents should enjoy their child’s participation in youth sports, not dread it.
- They’re not professionals. They don’t line fields for a living so they don’t always have the right equipment such as line striping machines, so they’re left to stripe fields with spray paint cans. Even if they have a steady hand or a small spray paint cart, getting a straight line the entire length of a soccer or lacrosse field is very challenging. (I have a volunteer parent that paints fields for my daughter’s team. A couple of my buddies accuse him of drinking on public property because the lines are so crooked.)
- Spray paint is not environmentally friendly. I won’t go into too much detail on the environmental impact but, having done my fair share of spray paint work, you definitely inhale a great amount of paint. It’s not good. It’s also not very cost effective.
What does it cost to line stripe a sports field? The industry standard is $500-$600 for the initial layout and $250-$350 for each repaint. These prices are for soccer, lacrosse, field hockey and similar fields. Football is a different animal altogether.
Because grass grows, the lines need to be repainted at least every two weeks and, in some cases, every ten days. So you’re looking at a rough cost of $500 per field per month.
I am currently offering a special in Northern, NJ of $350 for all initial layouts and $250 for repainting. This applies to organizations with more than one field and a commitment of two paintings per month per sports season. I’m only taking on an additional twenty (20) fields for 2022.