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Multi-use fields are becoming increasingly popular for parks and recreation departments, high schools and even colleges. Although natural-grass and crumb-rubber synthetic surfaces are often overused, certain measures can be taken to alleviate some of the damage:
Get A Handle On Drainage
For natural-grass fields with native soils, 10 events a week is overuse, and I suspect many schools and parks and recreation departments are hosting more than 10 events a week. The first thing to evaluate is drainage. If you rely only on surface drainage, there will be several rained-out games, or the fields will be destroyed from playing on them wet. Look into hiring someone to do drainage work. Some companies can install effective drainage inexpensively without disturbing the playing surface too much. While I was the sports-turf manager at Virginia Tech, a “Cambridge-style” system was installed on three fields. A 2-inch pipe installed across a field is connected to a collector line on a 6- to 10-foot spacing with sand slits cut perpendicularly to the 2-inch pipe slits. The entire system is then backfilled with sand. A wheel trencher works well with this operation because it does not disturb the surface as much as a chain trencher will.
For additional options, talk with a local sports-field construction company. Call someone at another facility that has had field drainage done by the company, and get an opinion as to the quality of the drainage system.