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.
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FIELD SCIENCE 10 SportsTurf | September 2015 www.sportsturfonline.com long x 3.5-foot-wide rolls that each weigh about one ton. The heavy weight of the sod holds the rolls in place on the field so that players can step foot on the grass the next day. A heater under the field—28 miles of heat pipe under the playing sur- face—helps keep the bermudagrass playable for as late into the year as possible. Come November, with autumn in full swing and tempera- tures dropping, Leonard will have pushed the bermudagrass as long as he can, but by nature, the warm-season grass thins and goes dormant. It's then that the stadium is stripped out and converted to a more cold-tolerant and green Kentucky blue- grass sod grown nearby in Hammonton, NJ. The bluegrass will carry the team through the end of the season. The team's three natural grass practice fields are a differ- ent story. Built in 2000, all three fields were originally grassed in Kentucky bluegrass. "As the age of the fields became older, we dealt with summer patch disease in the heat of summer in Philadelphia. It was becoming more humid, hotter," Leonard says. By 2013, when Chip Kelly was hired as head coach and decided to host training camp at the training facility, instead of off-site, Leonard says it was apparent that he needed to switch two of the three practice fields to a warm-season bermudagrass. "We needed to be sure we'd have safe, playable fields. We felt Latitude 36 was the best grass at that time," he says. Latitude 36 is a cold tolerant bermudagrass, developed at Oklahoma State University (and marketed by Sod Solutions). Latitude 36 stands up to the heat of the summer while also pro- viding a longer lasting green color into the fall, with the added benefit of high traffic tolerance. Leonard overseeds the Eagles' Latitude 36 practice fields with perennial ryegrass. After such an unusually cold winter last year where he saw some limited winterkill on his bermudagrass, he decided not to transition out the ryegrass at all. LOUISVILLE In Louisville, Kentucky, Tom Nielsen has been the head sports turf manager for 16 years at Louisville Slugger Field, home to the Louisville Bats, a Triple A farm team for MLB's Cincinnati Reds. The field is also used by the Louisville Coopers, a profes- sional soccer team. The seasons for both teams overlap, with soccer starting in March and baseball starting in April. For the first 14 years that Nielsen managed the field, it was grassed with bluegrass. "Kentucky is the bluegrass state. We should be able to grow it here," Nielsen says. But it wasn't easy. "I think of all of the stress I had gone through over the years, not sleeping once it hit 80 to 85 degrees, all of the babying with the cool-season grass. There was just no question to go to ber- mudagrass. The heat of the summer is just as hot as Georgia, it's just a smaller window. Our heat is June through September. Philadelphia Eagles' bermudagrass in week 4 of NFL season.