How do I grow grass here?

There is a path on my property just outside my fence used by teenagers
walking to highschool in one direction and JHS in the other. It's
only about 30 feet long.

For 22 years that I have been here, the path alternated between
periods of grass and periods of mud. As the kids got older and fewer
still went to elementary school, more of them walked on this path and
the grass situation got worse and worse.

Last fall I covered all the ungrassy areas and a bit of the grassy
area with sod. It looked beautiful for weeks, until the snow. The
kids continued to walk on it when it was covered with snow, so if
there was a muddy period then, I don't know.

When spring came 95% of the grass in the sodded area was gone and
there was less grass total then ever, THAN EVER! Much less than
before I started last fall. My neighbor on the other side of the path
thinks that it was caused by foot traffic, and that few if any times
did any of them ride a bicycle over the area (for one thing, because
they weren't riding bikes in the winter or in the snow to begin with.)
And there were no tire tracks in the soft dirt.

What can I do to get grass to stick? School will be over soon, and it
is very quiet in the summer. A couple kids a day. It was about 4 to
6 kids a day last fall, but when they noticed that it was no longer a
slurpy mudpath, more kids started using this shortcut up to maybe 15
or 20 round trips per day.

The ground will be soaking wet for days after a heavy rain, even
though it slopes downhill. Is this because of the heavy clay content
in the soil?, because there is heavy clay content (Unless I am totally
mixed up.) Is there any way I can get the earth to drain and dry more
quickly, because their walking on it one day when it is wet, I don't
think does that much damage. Four days in a row, wet from one
rainstorm, does a lot of damage.

The foot of the path is at the edge of a small hill where I could vent
a drain, if there were an easy way to lay an effective drain.

I don't want to do a lot of work, but there is a small chance I may be
renting an excavator (like a small back hoe) this summer anyhow. Is
there a way to scrape up the top 6 inches, mix them with something
that will fix things, and spread the six inches out again.

Meirman
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