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: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/107950
FieldScience | By Dr. Mike Goatley, STMA President >> FIGURE 1. A dormant but extremely dense Riviera bermudagrass field in early December 2012 at Wilson Memorial HS, Waynesboro, VA (photo courtesy of Jimmy Rodgers). Inside look at the turf team at Virginia Tech NSTEAD OF A TRADITIONAL ARTICLE* on the STMA President for this month's issue, I asked for the opportunity this year to tell you a little bit about the turfgrass program at Virginia Tech and some of the great work my colleagues are doing that might apply to you. I Team: a number of persons associated together in work or activity. Being a part of a team certainly does not guarantee success, but teams that continually strive to improve and work together (i.e. demonstrate teamwork) will most likely perform at the top of their abilities. Nearly every month, SportsTurf features an award-winning team of sports turf managers recognized as 'Field of the Year" winners. A common theme in these articles is the value of teamwork. I received exceptional mentoring regarding the importance of a team and teamwork as a young faculty member at Mississippi State University from Dr. Jeff Krans. Since those formative years in my professional career, I have made it a point to emphasize to my colleagues how much I value being a part of a team. Something that gives the members of the turfgrass program at Virginia Tech great satisfaction is how our clientele refer to us as the VT Turf Team. And nowhere have I said being part of a team is easy—securing the information for this article and getting a cover photo of the team was akin to herding cats! The VT Turf Team's collaboration across departments, programs, and colleges in our teaching, research, and extension programs has been cited by many administrators as a model for other programs at Virginia Tech to emulate. Our VT Turf Team is also much more than just the faculty, staff, and graduate students in our traditional academic programs, but it also includes our staffs that manage all VT athletic and recreational sports fields. Our athletics turf and recreational sports programs support turfgrass research, participate in our research field days, and are con- stantly "on call" for field and facility tours, something very important to our fund-raising and student recruiting activities. We also proudly claim as team members a large number of allied extension agents, private individuals, industry, and professional association cooperators around the state that assist us with financial support, on-site research opportunities, and the hosting of a variety of outreach programs. I want you to meet a few of my VT team membersand I asked them to join me in providing a brief highlight of some of our sports turf-related research projects. These reports are but very small parts of their research programs, and if you have further questions of my colleagues regarding this or other projects they are leading, please be sure to get in touch with them by way of the contact information available at www.vt.edu. BERMUDAGRASS EXPAN SION ON VIRGINIA SPORTS FIELDS-Mike Goatley. Virginia's transition zone climate makes it possible to grow either cool-season or warm-season grasses on athletic fields, but none of them very well. Either type of grass is going to regularly struggle from an extreme summer or winter season. A part of my applied research program is variety evaluation and my turfgrass program manager, Whitnee Askew, and I have spent a great deal of time assessing bermudagrasses that we believe are well suited for athletic field The data continually indicate what great potential the latest generations of cold tolerant vegetative and seeded bermudagrasses have for sports fields. 14 SportsTurf | February 2013 www.sportsturfonline.com