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Bilinski's Armwood Tools: Football, Paint Sprayer

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By SCOTT PURKS, Tribune correspondent

Published: November 30, 2007

SEFFNER - He sounds as Southern as moon pies and talks as fast as a cattle auctioneer.

"Watcha need?" Miles Bilinski says. "Only have a few minutes."

His skinny face is spackled with paint. He's holding a paint sprayer attached to a dented, paint-drenched canister on wheels. He's spraying Armwood's football field.

"Eighty gallons I'll use on this sucker," he says, spewing white between the 25-foot A and W of HAWKS in the end zone. "Gotta paint the lines, hash marks, yard-line numbers big and blue, big A in the middle of the field, the other end zone and the Hawk emblems to the right and left of the big A."

Which will take about 15 hours.

"Right now, though, gotta go coach Armwood's offensive line," he says. "Get back to this later around 7 p.m.."

Whew.

"Call it obsessed, possessed, whatever you like," Armwood coach Sean Callahan said. "But the fact is, Miles absolutely, positively loves that field."

When he isn't designing it - had a Japanese sunburst in the end zone earlier in the season, "That may not have been the best," Bilinski admitted - he's painting it. Or fertilizing it. Or mowing it.

"I mow it every day," he says. "Takes about an hour and 10 minutes. Not bad. Keeps it healthy to mow it. Not too high. Not too low. You know they mow golf course greens every day and they do all right."

The obsession started when Bilinski, 38, was a little boy in Monticello and his father, Max, coached the Jefferson County High football team.

"Dad was the same way with his field," says Miles of his father, who also worked 10 years as a golf course superintendent. "It was beautiful."

For big games like today's, Plant at Armwood, Max will come down and help Miles with the details.

"And we totally appreciate it," Armwood running back Eric Smith said. "I think the way our field looks helps us play better. I really do."

Bilinski says, "All I know is that we haven't lost a game on this field since December 2002 the year Bilinski started at Armwood. So who knows, maybe the field prep has something to do with winning 33 home games in a row."

He winks. And keeps on painting.

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