From the Statesman Journal

September 7, 2007

When Josh Welborn went into his senior year at Sprague High School in 1987, he figured the team would need some kind of a miracle to be competitive.

It showed up in the form of new head coach Robin Hill.

In Hill's first year, the team went from winning one game to reaching the state playoffs.

When the Sprague Booster Club approached Welborn, the owner of Oregon Cascade Plumbing and Heating, 20 years later, to donate his company's time and resources to building a new FieldTurf gridiron for Sprague, Welborn said yes.

"He came along his very first year and turned everything around," Welborn said. "Back then, football was my life. My brother, it was his life. I just wanted to give back."

Wednesday night, he and some of his six employees who played football for Hill at Sprague came out to eat a burger and marvel at the new surface the team will be playing on.

They'll be back tonight when Sprague debuts the field as the Olympians play McMinnville at 7 p.m.

"We feel real fortunate that we've able to get the field done in a tight time frame," said Bill McNutt, past president of the boosters. "We felt fortunate that the school district had confidence in us to let us give it a try because this was the first in Salem-Keizer."

The fundraising started last spring and brought in more than $900,000 in cash and in-kind donations.

Tonight will be the payout.

"It's a big project," said Chris Roche, the fundraiser on the installation. "The biggest hurdles related to the fact that it hadn't been done before on a private-public partnership. If we hadn't had the support of the district, whose been great.