The great IPFW flood of 2016

So the big scandal up this way is IPFW cancelling their hosted games of the Shindigz National Soccer Festival.  They claimed that fields 1 through 5 were flooded and unplayable.

Fields 1 and 2 on either side of the blue "stands", e-5 are below, which is actually north.  For those like me that consider north to be "up" and south "down", a lot of things begin making sense right off the bat.

Of course I couldn't wait to dive into this debate, and promptly shared my standard rant about IPFW's lack of drainage installation on the fields (at least the new ones) and how they f'ed up the hydrology of the entire area on the NSF Facebook page.  Hours later, NSF LIKED my post.  I sense a little tension here... the next day, a dude shared this bit of infopinion:

 Strangely enough the fields that are closed (1-5) all have drain tile. IPFW is too protective.


So off trotted Scrappy and I to ascertain the truth of the situation.  We came down from the north (or up if you are an IPFW mapper)...

Here we are facing north away from the fields in question.  Looks like they might have had a Cushman on the grass a little too soon...

This dip is between the trail and the field just north of 3-5.  No water here...

Now you are looking across the top of field #3.  Believe me, I have sloshed down this track when the field was bone dry.  And the woods spur in front of us is the dead last to dry, ever.

No wetter than a hard dew at 10 AM.

Here we are closing in on where the play area abuts the swamp on the north end.  Nothing.

The ONLY standing water we saw anywhere close to any of the five fields was here at the north edge of #5.  That water ended a good five yards from any playing area.

About here, Scrappy's bad leg started acting up.  The vet says he has a kneecap that slides out of place.  So we took a break, I rubbed his leg.  He started rolling on his back.  If you look, there is about a three-inch drop from the grass to the bare ground on the fence line.  Scrappy rolled right off of this with a thud.  When he got up, his leg was 90% normal.

Field #5 itself? Bone dry.

Badly in need of some proof of flooding, we figured if we couldn't find it around the Duck Pond, we'd never find it.  We did find a deer (who tore into the pond without so much as a splash), but no flooding.  Scrappy was already recovered enough to chase the deer- about five feet.

Suddenly, we found floodi... no, no, that''s the river.

The area between the south end of the Duck Pond can be the most treacherous, often rice-paddy-like, area in our journey.  No troubles today.

We finally reached Field #2.  Just look at all that no water.

However, we did learn that FB dude was right about the drainage.  Wow, is this an x-ray vision picture or something?

No, they've just got it tore up in the very back.  No evidence of flooding being the reason.  So why are you cancelling your games, IPFW?

And here's the main field, where the marquee games WOULD have been played.  Still no water.

So we have to come to the conclusion of A) IPFW IS too protective, B) they just don't want to have the grass around the fields torn up like they were during the Inflatable 5K earlier in the month, C) yet another clever insurance dodge (damn those liability payments!), or D) Purdue's Ag team defines a flood as "the grass is wet in spots."


Meanwhile, we ran into that deer again...

Right about then we found he had a buddy...

As we moved on, we saw that the south canal was back to normal...

...and it was a great night to be on the river.  BTW, that is NOT a Dowco canopy.

On the way home, we ran into Scrappy's buddy Theo...

In talking to Theo's Dad, he asked me, "Hey,  I thought they were gonna have that wing-ding soccer deal this weekend..."  I swept an arm behind me and exclaimed, "They had to cancel because of all this flooding!"

 And finally, Mr. Bunny greeted us on the way home.