SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/448298
www.stma.org February 2015 | SportsTurf 9 local employment agency. Working for a health insurance company in Green Bay at the time and miserable sitting at a cubicle day after day, Johnson regularly visited a local employment agency over his lunch hour. After reading the posting, "See Steve in the construction trailer in the Lambeau Field parking lot," his life was about to change. Johnson and Hutchison immedi- ately hit it off, having both served in the military. During the height of the Cold War, Hutchison had been a member of a select team of US Marines charged with protecting Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in Europe. Johnson fought in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm with a US Army artillery unit. "Military service instills discipline to complete a job. Sometimes completing that job is literally a life or death deci- sion," Hutchison says. Accustomed to hArd work Working hard at an early age on his family's dairy farm also helped to build Johnson's character. The Johnsons managed about two dozen milk cows and 50 young stock. They did not have automatic barn cleaning equipment when Allen was a boy. Johnson recalls loading manure on a wheelbarrow, transporting it to a wagon rack and then pulling the rack with a tractor to the fields to shovel it off for the second time. He also remembers working many a windy, snowy sub-zero day on the farm located 2 hours north of Green Bay in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. That experience made him mentally strong. Today when he works long days under adverse conditions at Lambeau's "Frozen Tundra," Johnson says "nothing will be as hard as those early days as a boy." Johnson joined the Army immedi- ately after graduating from high school. He returned home 4 years later and attended Northern Michigan University (NMU) where he received a Bachelor's degree in Public Administration. Before graduating, he served as an intern at the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) in Washington, DC. After graduating from NMU, however, Johnson had difficulty finding a job in his field. That is when he began working at the insurance com- pany. Being able to work outside rather than inside a cubicle was one of the reasons that Johnson left his insurance job. The ability to put his knowledge of equipment and his initiative to work were likely other reasons, Hutchison says. "He could quickly grasp what we were doing and start moving on it. There are lots of challenges working with sports turf. It requires someone to fully under- stand and implement what's needed." While working at Lambeau Field, Johnson also began working for UPS. "I would wake up at 4:00 am, go to work at UPS and then work at Lambeau," he says. When Tee to Green's renovation of Lambeau was finished, Hutchison asked Johnson if he wanted to stay on and travel with the company to other locations. But, Johnson did not want to leave the area at the time. Fortunately, a position as assistant fields manager for the Packers soon opened up, and Johnson took the job. He worked in this position 2 years before being promoted to fields manager after Todd Edlebeck, his former boss, moved within the Packers organization to become facili- ties manager. Soon after his promotion, Johnson enrolled in The Pennsylvania State University's online turfgrass program and earned an advanced certificate in turfgrass management. "It was one of the first online courses of its kind," Johnson says, adding that his soils classes were especially valuable. "In football, there are issues with drainage. These classes helped me get a good grasp of soil char- acteristics." He used what he had learned in this program to convince Packers management about the value of upgrad- ing Lambeau and its practice fields. When Johnson first starting working for the Packers, the practice fields had been composed of native soil with a lot of poor-draining clay. The first renova- tion involved reconstructing the rootzone with a sand base. Then sod was installed. To keep the turf in good playing condi- tion during Green Bay's short growing season, he also recommended the Desso GrassMaster system which involved injecting artificial fibers into the natural turf. The knitting together of the artificial fibers and the natural grass helps stabilize the root zone, Johnson says. Johnson eventually got management's go-ahead to remodel Lambeau and an outdoor synthetic practice field. The players said their legs were more stressed and fatigued playing on the other prac- tice field's artificial turf and that they did not like changing from one playing surface to another. Asked about his greatest accomplish- ments, Johnson says, "Being a dad. I have a great son." Ethan, 11, does not play football, but his dad points out that he is an excellent swimmer and excels in academics. demonstrAting vAlue Johnson also is proud of the renova- tion at Lambeau under his direction because it involved communicating his knowledge of field management and its impact on players so that management "He could quickly grasp what we were doing and start moving on it. There are lots of challenges working with sports turf. It requires someone to fully understand and implement what's needed." — Steve Hutchison