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/96775
finally went up to a road construction crew that was working on a street project to ask where I could get one. The guy looked at me as if I just asked him if he could fly me to the moon and then said, "What would you need something like that for?" So long story short I had to build my own until years later I could find one. KNIFFIN: What are some of your innovative solutions for maintaining the field without the tools and material you would have here in the States? PISCATELLI: A rake drag is something that I have had to create because our field has a large amount of worms in early spring and fall which leave a total mess on the grass making it nearly unplayable. For this I took a flexible metal mat drag with a wooden breaker bar in front then attached 4 metal hand rakes to the front. As soon as the sun has been out for a few hours and the worm excrement begins to dry the rake drag is pulled along and is able to not only www.stma.org break apart these small piles but smooth them out and in turn acts like a topdressing which we should be doing yearly but are not able to afford. So Mother Nature and a little ingenuity provide that for us. One of the biggest problems here is the lack of specialized material like mound clay or quick dry. These products are nonexistent in Europe unless you import them, which is very expensive. As someone who hates holes in baseball fields I was determined to find a solution. I watch every week as other teams push dry, dusty clay back into huge holes in the mound or batters box only to see it come right back out on the first pitch. I spent hours upon hours talking to people, surfing the Internet, and making my own test samples or different materials added together. After years of evolution I was able to make a product that holds up to the test. It has been a lifesaver in repairing my bullpens, game mounds, and home plate area. It is worth more than gold here for a groundskeeper. Piscatelli later explained how he was able to find at a 100-year-old brick factory, with owners of about the same age, hidden in the Black Forest. They provided unfired clay bricks that when soaked in water, have been critical in his making his own mound clay. Of course, baseball in Germany is very different from baseball in America. Some clubs are shrinking or while others are flourishing. In this soccer-first society public funding for ball fields is hard to come by. Maintaining a high quality field is not easy under these conditions especially when you consider the lack of sports turf maintenance education. For Piscatelli and the Atomics they have come up with cost saving and effective ways to take their field to a high level but on a low budget. Using this example we can be inspired to do more on a lower budget. ■ Matt Kniffin teaches history Chapel Field Christian HS, Pine Bush, NY. He worked for the Neuenburg Atomic's grounds crew in 2009 and 2010. SportsTurf 19