Athletic trainers have never had more to track. Between rising training loads, packed game schedules, and increasingly year-round competition, managing athlete health has become a multi-variable problem, and one variable getting more attention is the surface athletes actually play on.
That was part of the conversation at the 77th Annual NATA Clinical Symposia & AT Expo, held June 29 to July 2 in Philadelphia. TenCate, a synthetic turf manufacturer headquartered in Dalton, Georgia, used the event to spotlight Pivot Performance Turf, a system built without the loose rubber infill found in most traditional synthetic fields.
Why Surface Consistency Matters to Trainers
Athletic trainers already evaluate how workload, movement, fatigue, and confidence affect performance over the course of a season. According to Joe Fields, President and CEO of TenCate Americas, the surface itself belongs in that same conversation.
“The surface beneath the athlete is part of that environment,” Fields said. “Our focus at NATA was on reducing one of the variables athletes experience by making the field feel and respond more consistently under repeated use.”
For athletes, the movements that matter most are the repetitive ones: planting, cutting, sprinting, decelerating, landing, and pushing off again. A field that responds predictably through thousands of those repetitions, rather than degrading or shifting in feel over time, gives athletes one less variable to account for mid-season.
Removing Infill to Improve Consistency
Most synthetic turf systems rely on loose rubber, sand, or other infill to help shape how the surface reacts when athletes cut, accelerate, or absorb force. That infill layer is also where a lot of the inconsistency creeps in over time, as it compacts, shifts, or migrates with use.
Pivot removes that layer entirely. TenCate’s Chief Technical Officer, Colin Young, Ph.D., said the system was built around how athletes actually move rather than how turf has traditionally been measured.
“Pivot was developed around the way athletes actually use a field,” Young said. “That means looking beyond traditional turf measurements and focusing on how the surface feels and responds through repeated use.”
The system was developed through biomechanical research and testing with college and professional athletes across multiple sports, with the goal of replicating the response of high-quality natural grass without the maintenance demands infill systems carry.
A Consideration Beyond the Sports Medicine Staff
For schools, universities, municipalities, and sports facilities, turf consistency isn’t only a training room issue. Field performance factors into coaching decisions, athlete confidence, and long-term facility management and maintenance planning, making it a relevant data point for facility owners and planners as well as medical staff.
“Athletic trainers are dealing with more information, more expectations, and more pressure to help athletes stay on the field,” Fields said. “That raises the standard for every part of the athletic environment, including the surfaces beneath them.”
The Takeaway for Facility Planners
The broader point TenCate made at NATA is that turf performance shouldn’t be judged on installation day alone. How a field performs after months of repeated use, cutting, and load is a more relevant test, and one that’s increasingly informed by the same data-driven approach sports medicine teams already apply to athlete health.
“Athletes need surfaces they can trust,” Young said. “When the field responds consistently, athletes can train, compete, and return to play with greater confidence.”
