SportsTurf

August 2011

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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FieldScience Marcus Dean, CSFM Building a better pitch at the University of Kentucky T HE FALL OF 2009 in Lexington was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The University of Kentucky decided that some- thing had to be done to create a safer, better draining field for our two soccer programs. By no means was it our wettest fall, though Lexington received 16.23 inches of rain during the soccer season (August 1-November 15), which is almost 5 inches above average rain fall for that time. The wettest soccer season was 2006 when we received 21.82 inches of rain, 10.43 inches above our average for that time of year. Our existing game soccer field was built in 1996 as a modified native soil field. The soil was very inconsistent, some nice growing medium in spots and some native clay in oth- ers. You could really spot the inconsistency in the soil, especially when you aerified and pulled cores. The field was crowned with a 1% slope from mid field to each sideline, plus we had internal drain lines. Most of the drain lines were capped off by the native soil as soon as they were installed in 1996. After the 2006 season, we started to imple- ment a deep tine aerification into our mainte- nance schedule. We did this hoping to shatter our hard pan that existed about 4 inches below the surface. Deep tining definitely benefited us some, how much I can’t really put a figure on. I think it benefited the root system more than promoting drainage. We had a stronger, deeper rooted grass that would wear better but did not improve drainage that dramatically. The rain fall for the soccer season in Lex- ington has been feast or famine the past 6 years. Three years we were in drought condi- tions for the year, two years we were over flow- ing with rain fall, and only once (yes once) did we come anywhere close to the average rain fall for the soccer season. It should be noted that for the soccer season of 2010 we received 2.8 inches of rain, 8.6 below average. It would only be fitting that once the money was ap- proved for the project the problem went away. 16 SportsTurf | August 2011 So, we started to discuss all of our options and came up with a plan. We had to build a sand-based soccer field with internal drainage to handle the wettest possible scenarios. The last few field improvement projects at UK had been sand-capped systems and been handled as a “design/build” with the sports field con- tractors. These new field upgrades have per- formed very well for us, greatly increasing our drainage and reducing the construction cost compared to a USGA spec sand-based field. In planning for this renovation we looked back at our most recent field upgrades and highlighted items that we liked and made note of what we didn’t like. We knew we had only one shot to get this field right, we didn’t have any mulligans. We asked our head coaches for their opinions (better drainage was the only thing they cared about) to get them involved and to make sure they would be happy with the final product. Our next step was to re- search some new ideas and trends in sports field construction in an attempt to combine our old ideas with the latest and greatest in the athletic field construction business. The only reason for renovation was to im- prove drainage. We spent the most time trying to focus all of our attention on improving this. We knew that if we built a field that didn’t drain and meet the coaches expectations, our efforts would be a failure. We took our best draining field and copied that design. We chose to specify a drainage system using 4-inch perforated pipe on 20-foot centers in a herring bone pattern. The sand selected for the project will be supplied by Nugent Sand, a Kentucky company and supplier of the sand used for the practice football fields in 2005. While the available sand is slightly coarser than the sand used for the 2005 project, it not only meets, but also exceeds the infiltration rate we estab- lished as a requirement in the RFP. When we started to layout our irrigation design, we turned to all of our employees for their thoughts. No one knows what needs to be improved like the internal employees. We took every possible suggestion (zone layout, quick couplers, valve placement and depth, valve boxes, etc.) and made that a specification in our Request For Purchase (RFP). Water shortage is not (currently) a problem in Lex- ington but we knew we needed a system that could maximize our output with as little as possible input. We wanted to be the leader in environmental stewardship and water manage- ment for the Bluegrass area. After much conversation with fellow turf managers and a few irrigation companies, we settled on a Baseline 3200 smart controller system. Baseline offered us the most bang for our buck; easiest to use, ability to expand and include our existing controllers, flow monitoring, history backup , easy secure ac- cessibility, and most importantly reduction in water usage. The grass selection was a little bit more complicated. We have been growing Tifway 419 bermudagrass in Lexington successfully for the past 6 years. When researching new grasses, we were looking for a grass that wore like 419, greened up early in April, could withstand summer traffic, and be an aggressive grower. There are some newer varieties out there, seeded and vegetative, that promise a lot for the transition zone. To make this decision easier again we consulted with fellow sports turf managers and sod farms. The new vari- eties got a lot of praise, lots of positives but some negatives too. Knowing we only had one shot to make this right we chose to stick with the Tifway 419 bermuda, the “if it is not broke, don’t fix it” mentality. We chose to specify sod instead of sprigs; we will have an instant field. All we have to do is get the roots established and manage the sod layer. We have previously sprigged 419 here and it took about 10 weeks for it to grow www.sportsturfonline.com By

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