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/30215
FieldScience | Dr. William M. Dest and J. Scott Ebdon Study: Natural turf use levels NJURIES ARE OF MAJOR CONCERN to par- ents, coaches and, of course athletes. Few studies have been conducted to relate actual field conditions as well as maintenance practices to reported injuries. We conducted a study in 2007 to determine the level of use that an athletic field will sustain before field conditions begin to affect the playability and safety of the field. Eleven sports turf managers from four New England states volun- teered to take part in the study; they represented 12 varsity fields from nine high schools and three universities. Field use included football, soccer or both. Lacrosse was also played on two of the soccer fields. The turf manager participants were given a form to I record the date, event (game or practice) and hours/min- utes of use. This provided the number of weeks the fields were in use for which we then calculated the total number of hours of use over the playing season. All participants provided their maintenance program, including nitrogen fertilization treatments, mowing height and frequency, aerification, dethatching, topdressing, overseeding, num- ber of times chemicals were applied to control weeds, in- sects and/or diseases, and growth enhancement products used. The maintenance practices were quantified for sta- tistical purposes. All the fields in the study were irrigated. At the conclusion of the study, the participants asked their athletic departments about the number of injuries that could be contributed by players to surface contact; we did not solicit the type of injury. Nine of the 12 schools responded. FIELD EVALUATIONS The field surfaces were evaluated at the end of playing seasons for percent grass cover (turf density), percent weeds, surface smoothness, depressions (areas on the fields that can accumulate surface runoff), and stones at the sur- face. The characteristics evaluated were assigned code numbers (shown in Table 1) for the purpose of statistical analysis. Separate ratings were taken from the heavily traf- ficked center of the fields from goal to goal and the less trafficked areas along the sidelines. Overall field condi- tions were determined using the sum of ratings for grass cover and surface smoothness, with ratings for weeds, de- pressions and stones at the surface subtracted from the sum. The data shown in Tables 2 and 3 are from the heav- ily trafficked centers of the fields. Further, we evaluated the quality of the playing sur- faces by determining surface hardness, traction, and pene- tration resistance with separate measurements taken from 8 SportsTurf | May 2011 www.sportsturfonline.com By