SportsTurf

August 2013

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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Facility&Operations | By Dr. Elizabeth Guertal SPORTS AND SCIENCE – Sixth-Graders, Marbles and Potato Chips tend injuries and how to wrap to prevent sports injuries and in the process introduced participants to careers in nutrition, physical therapy and athletic training. • Our turfgrass team, stationed on the outdoor practice field, packed several activities into each 20-minute lesson. We talked about field construction; used potato chips and marbles to illustrate the concepts of soil compaction; helped students take horizontal slices of soil and turf from the field to see the layering of sand and root development in the field; and showed them how to use Every participant received a special Sports and Science T-Shirt that sported the Sports and Science logo and the Auburn Athletics Department's sponsorship. O N AN AFTERNOON last April, 45 sixth-graders who are keen on athletics but maybe not so much keen on science arrived on the Auburn University campus as participants in the first-ever "Sports and Science" program, produced by the Auburn University Athletics Department and the academic departments of Agronomy and Soils and Kinesiology. This after-school outreach event was designed to introduce youngsters to the possibilities of careers in which they could combine their love of sports with science. From all indications, it achieved its purpose. Sports and Science was held on a day when Auburn Athletics' indoor football practice facility was available and when a number of Auburn student-athletes would be around to help with the event 24 SportsTurf | August 2013 as part of National Student-Athlete Day, one in which high school and college student-athletes nationwide are celebrated for achieving excellence in the classroom, on the field and in their schools and communities. For the 2-hour event, faculty and graduate students in the agronomy and soils department's turfgrass program and in kinesiology and members of Athletics' Sports Medicine staff developed three educational activities designed to show youngsters some of the possible scientific careers related to sports. • Kinesiology faculty used their stateof-the-art imaging systems to let students analyze and track their athletic motion, using that as a starting point to talk about careers in injury rehabilitation, sports medicine and exercise science. • Auburn Athletics' Sports Medicine staff showed youngsters how to wrap pre- turfgrass measurement devices such as Clegg Hammers and torque meters. Students then got a special treat as a member of Auburn's athletic field maintenance staff, an Auburn agronomy alumnus, fired up the core aerator and made a pass across the practice field. Students then found the aerator holes and inserted dowel rods into them to measure the depth of the aeration. The activities began at 4 pm as parents dropped students off at the Athletic Complex. Auburn Director of Athletics Jay Jacobs and a couple of Auburn student-athletes welcomed the group, and then the students were separated into three groups of 15. From 4:15 to 5:15, the groups rotated among the three different 20-minute activities. Student-athletes spent the next 15 minutes running relays with the youngsters, and at 5:30 pm, organizers served the kids pizza and handed out goodie bags. www.sportsturfonline.com

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