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/232221
Field Science DC United come back and play a of the sod and the way you're league game on the field would be a maintaining it so it's ready for disservice. So, we decided to resod play when you put it down … the field," Mohamed says. The TifGrand is extremely dense. Leak adds, "In order for the There are just more plants per whole thing to look the same, we JFK FIELD CREW (L-R): Pablo Blanco, Michael Mohamed, Willie Leak, Jeff Hunter, square foot and the density makes Anthony Jones. Photo credit Nick Woodall, Mike B Photography. just decided to resod the whole it really wear tolerant. We take the field. We figured that would be mowing height down to ¾-inch the best way to go. We only have X-amount of time to recover and in the farm field. It gets dense and tight and uniform so it plays very we didn't think we had enough time to make it come back in time well and holds up to traffic." for soccer." The TifGrand sod is grown on sandy soil in North Carolina and After the tournament, the field is stripped of sod, laser graded and some 95,000 square feet of sod is shipped as 42-inch big rolls to the resodded, "everything as if we were installing a new field," Leak says. stadium site. Charles Harris is the president of Buy Sod, Inc., the licensed sod "Now it's almost routine," Mohamed says. "Once we have the event producer that grew and installed the original TifGrand field at RFK. in July, we know we're tearing up the field. It only takes about a week Buy Sod is licensed to produce TifGrand through The Turfgrass to get the old field up and the new field down." Group. Buy Sod has come back each July after the weeklong tournaResodding an entire field every year is an expensive proposition but ment and replaced the grass, providing the stadium with a brand Mohamed says, "fortunately the event in July helps take care of some new playing surface every year. Because he knows the replacement of those costs." sod will be needed each summer, Harris and his team plan ahead. Erik Moses is senior vice president of sports & entertainment for "We select the sod field the grass will come from the year before Events DC, the entity that operates the stadium for the city. Moses exand hold out the grass to be sure it's at least two growing seasons old so plains his position as the "person responsible for attracting events to the sod is very mature and will hold together very well. We grow the our campus." He says that his clients, including college coaches and turf in sand and the rhizomes on the back of the pad are very unievent promoters, continuously offer enthusiastic compliments regardform," Harris says. "I think that's the critical component, the quality ing the condition of the field. "We get those kinds of accolades because of the hard work that Willie and all of the other guys do to preserve and maintain that surface. They make my job easier for me. I would be remiss if I didn't explain how maintaining the field and the playing conditions in a particular way really impacts our business, the bottom line and how we service our customers. These guys really play a big role in that." The stadium "does function as a living monument to Robert Kennedy," Moses says. "It means so much to the city. That is why we try so hard to maintain it. Fifty-two years and counting." Mohamed says he, like Leak and so many others, has a love for the stadium. "I've been coming here since I was 7-yearsold. I was a big Redskins fan. It has a lot of history to it. So much has happened here. The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, The Grateful Dead. So many people have been in and out of this building," Mohamed says. "We have a saying around here that RFK's got you. You'll be here forever. You just don't know how long forever is going to be." n Stacie Zinn Roberts is an award-winning writer and president of What's Your Avocado?, a writing and marketing firm based in Mount Vernon, WA 40 SportsTurf | January 2014 www.sportsturfonline.com