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/40933
Facility&Operations problem, they may be as clueless as me. I try to be the one that doesn't claim to have all the answers. Know your maintenance team's role. As the sports turf man- ager at ISU I understood what the job focus was. As Director of Fa- cilities and Grounds I've been blind-sided a few days with numerous duties I didn't realize fell under our team's sphere. I have come to understand much more globally how the athletics depart- ment is put together. The politics are clearer. Our responsibilities are critical to intercollegiate team successes, fan enjoyment and cus- tomer service. Your department depends on you to "polish the crown jewels" and put the best face on your facilities and leave meaningful impressions on guests. Also, as important as I knew the recruiting process was for teams, I still had it underestimated. Talk to your coaches. Coaches travel nationally and see athletics facilities at many levels during recruiting and competition seasons. They know what they like and dislike. They also know what they want. You normally don't have to ask them that! Hopefully your coaches also clearly know what they need to flourish and what they can live without. In my new role I have a different relationship with coaches. Rela- tionships are not necessarily fostered through daily discussions and casual chats on their fields anymore but are in more formal meeting environments. Trust between you and coaches is just as critical as ever and I'm grateful to have developed good trust with those coaches over the years. They have to trust that you and your team are as commit- ted to their team's success as even they are. In this regard I am ex- tremely fortunate by now working with a sports turf manager (Tim VanLoo, CSFM), facilities managers (Brett Weiland and Brian Lamb) and a key program assistant (Allison Taylor) that each under- stand and carry out communications better than I probably do or ever did. I honestly feel like all parts of this puzzle are heading in the same direction and we trust each other better than at any time since I've worked here. Hire smart and manage easy. I must be honest, though. Going from being the sports turf manager to being the supervisor of the sports turf manager was a transition I was kind of nervous about. We limped for more than a year with folks doing double-duty around here in anticipation of hiring the new sports turf manager. When we posted the position it was obviously critical that a special person was needed to fill the po- sition. Iowa State offers opportunities that are found very few other places, such as there being only one full-time turf manager on staff, a student pool that is as good as anywhere, and the opportunity to be an integral part of the university's academic mission. Besides managing fields this person would be very much an in- structor and mentor. Aside from all of this, the new sports turf manager was going to manage the baggage of being supervised by the person that held the position for 15 years before his or her com- ing on staff! Great candidates were interviewed but Tim VanLoo, CSFM has been a perfect fit for Iowa State. Tim's had great patience in allowing me to figure out my new role relative to field manage- ment. Honestly—and I'm not so proud of this—it was difficult at first to turn away from doing the work I'd done for 15 years and watch someone else take over that role. My hands were definitely full of other responsibilities and I knew the guy we hired could do the job better than I could but it was still challenging to find a bal- 10 SportsTurf | September 2011 ance that was healthy and rewarding for us both. Tim knew this would be a learning curve for me and had the utmost consideration for easing the transition with me. We checked with each other con- sistently to make sure one of us didn't feel like the other was feeling displaced or having difficulty. From day one, we threw that "ele- phant in the room" out into the open and discussed it. I've tried to error on the side of "these are Tim's fields now" and have stayed out of the way; in hindsight possibly to a fault. There is a fine balance between my staying far enough away so that people know Tim is the sports turf manager and staying so far away from his work that Tim might feel alienated or possibly that I'm not 100% supportive. I'm being very honest that nurturing this fine dy- namic is critical to each of us feeling completely comfortable with each of our new positions. I had a year or more to plan for a new sports turf manager hire and this very crucial dynamic was one I hadn't prepared properly for—and it may be the most important chemistry element of all! After a full year I can honestly say Tim and of course the others I work with have been supportive of our vision and patient with the transition. The benefit to our employer is obvious; we have the em- ployee with history of our fields and resources and we have an ex- ceptionally gifted young sports turf manager to take the whole program up a notch. Believe me, I could not be prouder and it's going to be a fun ride! Know the department's vision. Know your role in helping carry out or determining the department vision. Athletic directors and sen- ior administrators have their visions. If whoever is in that role at your facility hasn't conveyed it to the facilities and grounds team, ask them to. When you go on a trip you don't just start driving and trust you'll end up somewhere nice! You define it, you map it out and you set off on the most efficient way to successfully reach the target. Our university is not one of the "big boys" in the arms race of college athletics. We are forced to maximize budgets and often times left to do repairs or renovations in phases or settle for the Chevy fix instead of the Cadillac fix. Clearly seeing the boss's vision helps each of us understand in a nutshell that we may not have the fanciest things but we should be the hardest working or the "crafti- est" at what we do. Know what makes people tick. In our profession we feel as though we're climbing uphill every day of our career. Some turf managers work in facilities where it seems they're starting from scratch each day of the growing season and just the basic tasks are a challenge to accomplish in a long day. Others are able to spend ade- quate time working on the fine details as well as the basics of what our user groups or employers need. One might fit my style and one would probably be very challenging. As I now serve as more of a coach than ever before, it's important to have the players put in positions where they will succeed. Our staff has dramatically changed the past 5 years. The folks I work with now have different strengths and interests than the folks be- fore. Know what is important in the lives of your staff and ensure their batteries get recharged by getting to do them. This may mean I cover a manager's duties on the first day of deer season in ex- change for his covering me on opening day of trout season. We're all more enjoyable to be around when our focus is on work and not www.sportsturfonline.com