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/775572
FACILITY & OPERATIONS 32 SportsTurf | February 2017 www.sportsturfonline.com some strength off a lake about 30 miles away. I contacted the tournament director to keep him up to speed but explained to him because we sit on a peninsula on the Gulf of Maine most the of the storms seem to split and follow the river to our north and a river to our south, both within 15 miles. This may seem strange but it happens to us more than people may think. As the time approached 3:30 pm I noticed the track of the cell was still heading directly for us and not wavering. At 4 pm the situation was getting real, as I met with the tournament staff discussing contingency plans, as this storm was reported to have strong gusty winds, torrential downpours and hail. Not typical for a Maine thunderstorm in June, at least on the coast. Lastly, the last round of games started at 4 pm. By 4:30 it was evident that this was going to hit us and started clearing the fields and made it mandatory to get people to their cars because we did not have the space to house hundreds of people. All I remember thinking was, please do not let us get to much rain to flood the fields out, which has happened to us in the past. I recall looking out the window as the storm approached and looking at the tree line about ¼ mile away and seeing a wall, yes a wall, of water coming right at us. It rained for approximately 45 minutes and deposited almost 4 inches of rain, needless to say the fields were flooded and of course the tournament directors are looking at me on how to fix the conditions. As my crew and I jumped into action my first thought was to try to get the water off the fields by using our 8 horsepower pump with 2-inch fire hose attached to it. We were able to remove the standing water on two fields in about 4 hours then solid tine aerate the playing surface to increase surface area. By the way it was dark and we do not have lights on our fields. We then moved to the area with the other four fields and started moving (pushing) and pumping water off of those. We finished at 1 am. I sent the crew home and had them report at 5:00 am to assess the situation. At 6 am the tournament director showed up and went over the situation and we agreed that five of the six were playable, which meant we needed to line another field for 8 am to all the games started on time. By Sunday the original 6th field was reopened and they were able to finish the tournament on time, which made the tournament staff extremely happy. That is by far the proudest I have ever been of a crew as everyone worked together to make this happen during the best and worst conditions. We did not receive one complaint as the fields played a little soft but footing was not sacrificed. The worst parts of the fields were actually where the line officials were running up and down the sidelines. In the end, no matter how well you are prepared for the worst, it is how you respond and work together to overcome adversity. MY DISASTER AND HOW I OVERCAME IT Editor's note: We asked some readers to share their stories of when a turf-related disaster strikes and how they handled it: Rick Perruzzi, CSFM South Portland, ME Parks and Rec In 2007 our Recreation department was approached about hosting part of the US Youth Soccer Region 1 Soccer Championships in June of 2008. This tournament is still the largest to date we have hosted on our facility, which has six soccer fields, five softball and two baseball fields. After discussing the impacts internally, we decided to go ahead and host games during this 3-day event, which had teams from as far south as Virginia traveling to the Portland, ME area. Wanting to put our best efforts into this event, we made it our mission to make all 6 fields have the same conditions in terms of ball roll and aesthetics. Going into spring we were able to shut all the fields down to get them prepared for the 12- hour abuse they were going to take for 3 days. The fields were mowed at 1 ¼ inches starting in mid-May once the weather got nice, did some sod work where needed, topdressed all six fields and had an aggressive fertility program to ensure its strength and recovery time. Two weeks before the tournament we started to line the fields so we could begin the traditional soccer pattern as seen in the professional ranks. The biggest component that helped us was that the weather had been awesome, if anything a little dry, but with our irrigation system we could control moisture levels. I remember the Tuesday or Wednesday before the tournament I started to realize that we actually pulled this off and created the best fields possible for a tournament of this size, especially where we had never hosted anything like this before. When the tournament directors showed up they were extremely happy and impressed with what we were able to produce for a product, six fields all looking and playing the same. The start of the tournament on Friday morning went off without a hitch and continued into the afternoon. Around 2 pm I started looking towards the west, as I normally do because as turf managers we are also meteorologists, and noticed what I thought looked like potential thunderheads. I went into my office and brought up the radar and noticed some small storms forming about 50 miles away, as they traditionally seem to gain