Sports & Athletic Flooring: Robbins, Mondo, Gerflor

By Jessica Chevalier

From professional stadiums to college recreation centers, middle school gymnasiums to multi-use church facilities, the primary concern in the specification of sports and athletic surfaces is the prevention of injuries.

This comes as no surprise, of course, in professional sports where athletes are paid millions of dollars to perform. An injury that takes them out of the game amounts to money out the window in not just salary but also in the potential for greater loss due to an impaired performance by the team, leading to reductions in both ticket and paraphernalia sales.

However, these days the concern is equally relevant in churches, where people of varying physical abilities may be participating in a game of pick-up basketball. An individual who suffers a broken ankle or dislocated knee playing on a church court may, then, turn around and sue the institution—obviously an undesirable situation all around. Therefore, churches must protect their interests by investing in flooring that protects those playing upon it.

The same holds true for schools, from elementary to university. To the best of its ability, a school is responsible for keeping its students safe. Thoughtful specification of sports flooring is one way in which a school has control over its students’ safety.

PROFESSIONAL & UNIVERSITY LEVEL
Kim Lammers, an engineer designer at 360 Architecture in Kansas City, Missouri, which was recently acquired by HOK, has seen the attention to injury prevention—and flooring’s role in that pursuit—change over the course of her 11 year career in the sports design field. “[Injury prevention] is a hot topic,” she says. “The professional and collegiate teams that I work with are now more concerned about keeping their players healthy, about keeping them on the field or court. At a recent athletic director’s convention that I attended, there was at least one seminar about the colleges’ due diligence in keeping athletes safe. At the college level, the school is held responsible. At the professional level, teams are investing time and revenue into their players. An injured player is a bad return on investment.” Since the floor is the single surface that athletes are continually in contact with—and also the surface they impact when things go wrong—it is the one point of con trol that designers have in preventing or minimizing injury.

Those who follow professional athletics are likely aware that injury prevention is a hot topic at present. Concussions are of particular concern in the National Football League (NFL). In fact, as of July 7 of this year, the courts granted preliminary approval of the NFL Concussion Settlement, in which the “retired NFL players sued, accusing the NFL of not warning players and hiding the damages of brain injury,” explains the NFL Concussion Settlement website. This settlement guarantees “[m]onetary awards for the diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, dementia and certain cases of chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE (a neuropathological finding) diagnosed after death….”

Of course, due to the violent nature of the game, football players are at greater risk for concussion-related injuries than other athletes (besides female hockey players, that is). But it will be interesting to see, as time progresses, how this settlement trickles down to other sports, both professional and collegiate. Is a retired professional basketball player with chronic ankle pain entitled to compensation? What about a college-level soccer player who tears ligaments in her knee and thereby loses her chance to compete professionally? One thing is certain: preventing injuries is much better than dealing with the aftermath, both psychologically and monetarily, and flooring that can help prevent injuries will win out with designers and their clients.

As one might expect, when it comes to flooring specification, professional teams opt for the latest and greatest. Lammers recently worked on the Chicago Bulls’ practice facility, called Advocate Center, for which she specified Robbins MVP, a system that dampens vibrations and eliminates resonance frequencies that can lead to injuries.

As with professional sports, universities generally choose top of the line materials for courts where their team athletics are played, and the specifications for competitive sports played indoors are typically straightforward. A university, for instance, will always have a maple basketball court for the use of its basketball team. These projects are typically funded out of the athletic budget, says Lammers.

There is more flexibility, however, when it comes to recreation center specifications, which are generally paid for by the academic side of the institution. Says Lammers, “Recreation facilities are becoming the arms race of the college world. It’s a big recruiting method. Fitness is a big deal, and facilities are becoming nicer. High-end gyms at a college are the standard. Buildings often include fitness classrooms, indoor pools, indoor tracks, weight rooms, dance and martial arts rooms. Students can try anything they want. Some even have golf simulators and rock climbing walls.”

In August 2013, Lammers and her team completed such a facility for Auburn University. The Recreation & Wellness Center is a 240,000-square-foot facility—one of the largest in the Southeastern Conference (SEC)—that has earned LEED silver certification. The center includes a one-third mile track; a multi-purpose court used for soccer, badminton, volleyball and basketball; group fitness studios used for yoga, cycling and mind-body practice; cardio and fitness training areas; weight training areas; a game room with foosball and table tennis; regulation size basketball courts; racquetball courts; a PGA golf simulator; two 50 foot climbing towers and a bouldering cave; a personal training studio; core and stretching areas; and meeting rooms.

You might assume that a facility with so many different uses would require the specification of many different flooring types, but Lammers chose a single product, Mondo’s Sport Impact, for all but the running track to create a uniform aesthetic throughout the facility.

Sport Impact comes in three thicknesses: 3mm, 6mm and 8mm. Lammers specified the 8mm product for high-impact areas. Typically in these areas, a platform must be built or a matte installed to handle the impact of dropped plate weights or dumbbells, but the 8mm Sport Impact is thick enough to absorb the impact without incurring damage.

The 6mm product was specified for areas where there was less impact but prevention of injuries was still a concern, like cardio areas. The 3mm product was specified for corridors.

For the indoor running track, which is an undulating, corkscrew track that crosses over itself, Lammers and her team chose Mondo’s textured rolled rubber. The product is specified in Auburn orange and looks like a big ribbon looping through the space. All colors for the Auburn facility were custom made by Mondo to Lammers’ specifications.

Though injury prevention is Lammers’ top concern with university work, durability earns a close second. “With colleges, our goal is to be as timeless as possible. We try to create facilities with a 20 year lifetime.” For university specifications, there are two important aspects to consider with regard to durability. First is simply consideration of the length of time that a college will go before renovating the space, which is frequently decades. But secondly, Lammers says that specifiers must consider how students will use or, unfortunately, abuse the space. Says Lammers, “We hear horror stories about how college students treat their surroundings, what goes on in them, a seven foot tall student jumping up on a countertop for instance.”

In addition, specifiers must manage the expectations of their clients, instructing them, for example, that no flooring product will stand up long term to skate blades. “With hockey, for example, we often have a coach or trainer bring in a skate, hold it up to our carpet sample and cut it. Nothing is skate proof. Nothing is cleat proof. We just shake our heads.” Lammers says it would be helpful to specifiers if flooring manufacturers provided more specific details about how their products will withstand these extreme applications.

She also notes that sports flooring manufacturer reps are frequently in contact with coaches and trainers, and, as a result, the staff will often tell her up front what brand and type of flooring they want to be installed. Lammers believes that the involvement of the staff in the specification process—and specifically in conversations with manufacturers—is ultimately

beneficial. “They are training their athletes on it,” she says. “They have different questions and concerns from the designer.”

Wet areas, such as locker rooms, present completely different challenges. Lammers is appreciative of the strides that the carpet industry has made in offering antimicrobial product, and she advises ceramic tile manufacturers seeking sports and recreation business to be sure that they are offering product with antimicrobial and anti-slip properties.

Typically, Lammers shies away from wood-look resilient product because, in her opinion, the visuals are simply too fake looking. And because the walls of recreation facilities often provide little opportunity to pull in school colors, especially in weight areas that have mirrored walls, Lammers believes that the floor is the best place to display school colors and, perhaps, a logo, so she prefers colors to wood looks from a practical angle as well.

Regarding sustainability, Lammers says that her athletic clients sometimes work toward achieving LEED standards, but fewer actually apply for certification. “Is sustainability part of the conversation? Yes, for sure, but it’s difficult. We have consultants mention that we should do a bamboo basketball court, but that doesn’t work at our level. For many of my clients, it’s not just about points but about doing the right thing, and on the athletic side, it’s about what is truly best for the athletes. You don’t want them to train on a floor that won’t perform as well.”

Typically, colleges have competent and well-informed maintenance staffs, but even so, Lammers feels that it is productive to reduce the number of transitions between flooring products and provide a maintenance plan that is straightforward. The specification of Mondo flooring throughout the Auburn facility reduced the number of cleaning methods needed. “A lot of times,” says Lammers, “you’ll have tile in the corridor, carpet in the offices and rubber in the workout areas. That’s complicated. If we can use the same material and make it look good, we’ll do it.”

K-12 STRATEGIES
According to designer Dan Beaty of Planera Architects, a Chicago-based firm that specializes in K-12 design, the choice between hardwood and resilient for K-12 gyms is, in many cases, fairly straightforward as well. Beaty focuses on education work and occasionally designs park district projects, such as neighborhood recreation facilities, as well.

In Beaty’s experience, schools that have one main gymnasium will typically choose maple hardwood, and schools that have multiple gyms will chose hardwood for the main court and resilient for the secondary spaces like fitness, dance and cardio rooms, as well as field houses. At times, due primarily to cost, a school will chose resilient flooring for its main gym.

For many of the schools that Beaty works with, the ability of a floor to keep student athletes safe is more important than its ability to help them perform, to increase their speed or jump, for example. Beaty explains, “It’s not as much about kids breaking bones, it’s how much resistance there is when they stop suddenly and twist an ankle or knee.”

In Beaty’s opinion, resilient is a better choice than hardwood for multipurpose spaces where a variety of sports, like both basketball and volleyball, will be played. “It’s not perfect for any one sport, but it can do all sports pretty well. In addition, it doesn’t take as much care as a wood floor, and wood is a lot more costly.” Often, multipurpose spaces are used for non-sports activities as well, like assemblies and dining, so the specified flooring must also be able to withstand the movement of tables and chairs over its surface.

Part of the cost of hardwood is due to the subsystems used under these courts. Fifty years ago, hardwood was sitting atop concrete, but that is rarely the case today. “We use 3/4” maple with subsystems. There are a million different subsystem types—every manufacturer has their own take on it. Often, there are wood strips, then rubber strips and sandwich materials. The systems can get very sophisticated. Even junior high school gyms will have some system with rubber resiliency.” Resilient flooring, however, is typically installed atop concrete, which also helps keep its cost down.

For a recent project, the Forest Trail School in Park Forest, Illinois, Beaty specified a maple hardwood court for the main gym but used Gerflor’s Taraflex for the fitness room, geared towards dance and aerobics, because Taraflex provides good resiliency and shock absorption. A second floor, which was designed to be built at a later date, will include a running track and weight area. For that space, Beaty specified rolled rubber, which offers less give and is able to stand up to the abuse of free weights.

Wood look resilient is a more popular choice than colored flooring in Beaty’s experience. He reports that these wood looks, which have become more sophisticated in recent years, are widely available and widely used in K-12 work.

Unfortunately, for many of Beaty’s clients, sustainability isn’t a primary concern, due to budget restraints and the perception that going green is cost prohibitive. “We haven’t heard much about it from our clients,” he says. “Most of them are just happy to be getting new facilities.”

Beaty believes that the sports flooring industry is moving in the right direction, but he’s always on the hunt for new and improved materials that can stand up to the abuse of students.

“The sports flooring industry doesn’t change dramatically, but it does get more sophisticated with time.,” he says. “We have more varieties to choose from, multiple product types for different uses. Floors that can do more than one thing are helpful. There are many available, but we still need more. I need floors that can withstand a variety of activities without being damaged,” he says.

CHURCH FLOORING
Like schools, churches often have recreational spaces that function, secondarily, for a variety of purposes. They are often used for worship on Sunday mornings, club sports through the week, and youth group meetings on Wednesday nights. On any given day, then, a church floor might have amplifiers and other musical equipment dragged across it; rows of chairs assembled and disassembled atop it; athletes of all ages and abilities jumping, running and falling on its surface; meals eaten; games played; drinks spilled. Lynn Pickard, interior designer with Chicago’s Aspen Group, which focuses on church work, says that recently the flooring industry has begun providing “…cost effective solutions that are good solutions. This has been a really good thing for the church [sector].”

Cost plays a significant role in flooring specifications for church gyms, as does durability. Says Pickard, “Gerflor says that its sports floors will last ten to 15 years. Churches usually double that [lifespan] easily.”

In addition, maintenance can be challenging in churches. While religious institutions with financial resources often hire a professional maintenance team or have an informed facilities person on staff, others may, for instance, hire a needy church member to do the job. “We need flooring that is easily maintained,” says Pickard. “Often churches don’t have great maintenance programs, though some do. It depends on the church. In some cases, they have someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, and we have to help with education.”

Pickard recently completed a project for Community Christian Church in Naperville, Illinois. The congregation had been worshipping in its gym space; however, when it built an addition to serve as a new worship facility, Pickard was hired to rework the gym. “This is not a professional court, but it is more community oriented, for leagues and such. And the room is also used for high school group meetings—as worship and hang out space, activity space, dinner space. There is lots going on there, so we chose Gerflor’s Taraflex because it is flexible and won’t be damaged by tables and chairs. It also has a lot of give, which is good for the old folks playing basketball in there.” This floor requires no more maintenance, says Pickard, than a damp mop. While Community Christian does have a professional maintenance team, Pickard still considers this a significant boon for the church.

Though Community Christian has organizational colors and a logo, Pickard chose to go with a wood look floor because the church expressed concerns about being locked into those identifying markers for the lifespan of the floor. In addition, the space, which functions as overflow on Sunday mornings, opens to a lobby with wood-look flooring, so going with a wood look created a uniform visual. Says Pickard, “I normally do a wood look, but I don’t love it. It is a better choice than solid for a multifunction space, but some are still fake and cheesy looking. If there were other options, I’d be eager to look.” Pickard points out that marks stand out prominently on a single-color floor and that, in spaces as large as a gym, a single color is simply overwhelming.

Churches, like K-12 schools, often believe that going green is beyond their budget, “A lot of times, a church will ask about it but never push forward with it. It goes back to cost. They are not going to apply for LEED or anything, but we [designers] do try to keep it in the back of our heads. We need to be conscious of it, and churches do, too,” says Pickard.

With regard to where she hopes sports and athletic flooring manufacturers will focus their future energies, Pickard says, “For me, it all goes back to cost, anything that is less expensive but looks really great. It must also assist with injury prevention and perform well. The industry is getting there.”

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