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/318924
10 SportsTurf | June 2014 www.sportsturfonline.com Field Science is used in wet or dry conditions in order to keep up with field damage. Seed is the great equalizer in this equation. It allows us to keep some turf cover. Summer camp is different from our regular practices during the school year. Practices are longer and are held 6 days a week for around 3 weeks. In addition to seeding, managing moisture is probably the key to surviving this time of the season. During warm weather irrigation is run just after practice to help the turf recover and allow plenty of time to dry before the next practice. A wet field can be ruined in a single practice. Monitoring your field during this period is very important. Your practice field is going to be used all year long. If no maintenance is done, it will be a very long and bare season. Game on It always amazes me how much more energy and time we spend on our game fields. The team spends much more time on the practice field but the game field garners all of the attention. At Overbrook we have a very good situation when it comes to our stadium field. One of the reasons the field holds up as well as it does is the fact that it really is just a football field for games. Our coaching staff has even volunteered to move their Friday practices to the practice field in order to preserve conditions on the game field. The Overbrook marching band has their own practice area at the back of our school that allows them to practice whenever they want. They do however practice on the game field for longer periods of times than I would like during the competition portion of their season. It does force us to aerate more and keep an extra eye on the area of the field that they practice on over and over again. I guess the best advice is to have a good relationship with your coaches and administrators to make your life easier. Cooperation is great but you need a good plan going in to the week of a football game. Start by looking at the weather forecast to set up a painting and mowing schedule. Typically we will cut Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a Saturday game with paint- ing reserved for Thursday and Friday. Our cutting height is a little higher than most fields (2.5-3 inches). We counter that by using a light roller on game day to provide a smooth flat surface. In order to keep our sidelines straight, they are cut a quarter inch shorter that morning before rolling. As the season progresses we begin to broadcast perennial rye seed before our games. This allows the athletes to work the seed in with their cleats. Carmelo Anguilla running a mower. Bill Loftus filling divots.