Once The Associated Press did a story, donations — large and small — began coming in. And the project would not have been successful with just the large donations.

“It’s people just like us who did this,” she said. “It was people who had the same vision we did.”

Once the money was raised, the next obstacle was getting the 650,000 pounds of products — the turf and the rubber mulch that goes underneath it — to Alaska.

The carpet came from Georgia, the inlays from Pennsylvania. Getting them to the west coast was the easy part.

Barrow is accessible only by plane and boat, and boats can only get in during a few summer months.

The products got to Anchorage, then were trucked to Deadhorse, but three days before the final barge left for Barrow, “We were told it cannot be done,” Parker said.

She talked by phone with the Barrow town council.

The reply she received was that community decided “to do something drastic.”

Something drastic was done and the carpet finally arrived after being flown in from Deadhorse.

Then, when the products did arrive, it was less than two weeks before opening game. Estimates were that installation would take three weeks to a month.

Ten days later, the field was ready.

One of the biggest challenges was talking to folks in Barrow “who do not know football,” Parker said.

In fact, once the carpet arrived and crews were installing it, she talked by phone to one worker who excitedly told her that they had reached the 80-yard line.

And while the Barrow team scored a late touchdown in front of crews from ABC, NBC, CNN and ESPN to defeat Seward and take a victory plunge into the Arctic Ocean, the big winners were people of Barrow.

Barrow’s roads are unpaved, frozen much of the year, muddy the rest.