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/43432
• Mow different heights around all your fields to slow down sheet water movement with higher grasses mows around the field. • Practice good housekeeping with all your fertilizer products. Clean-up spills or shop areas that stores fertilizers. Do not let them go down the drain. • Clean all sports facility drains and it keep them free of silt and other types of yard waste, that can harm your local watershed. IMPROVING SOIL STRUCTURE IN A SUSTAINABLE WAY Your soil profile can be a challenge to prop- agate turfgrass in athletic fields depending on your horizon zone. Soil textures can also be a challenge depending on the organics percent- ages in your sand, silt, or clay athletic fields. Applying compost can add beneficial fungi to fight certain turfgrass diseases and to help re- tain water, which in return reduce storm water runoff and provide much needed nutrients to turfgrass. Examples include: grass clippings, leaves, prunings, aeration cores, coffee grinds, annual flowers, shrub trimmings, shredded Christmas trees, and wood chips. ENERGY PERFORMANCE The Environmental Protection Agency along with Energy Star has developed a pro- gram called "The National Building Associa- tion for Professional Sports Stadiums and Athletic Facilities." The program is a competi- tion among other professional sports facilities and arenas for energy performance. The EPA picks one facility that has managed to reduce and conserve the greatest amount of energy and gives them an award to showcase their success. Here are some other outstanding organiza- tions that help promote environmentally sound sports turf maintenance: • Global Sports Alliance: Kevin Trotta, tur- fipmguy@aol.com • Audubon International: Jim Sluiter, js- luiter@auduboninternational.org • EPA-Energy Star: Laura Senchack, LSen- chack@icfi.com • National Watershed Coalition: Michael Hebert, mhebert@mckinneytexas.org Get involved with your local watershed as- sociation. Lead by example within your com- munity and offer your ideas to conserve or protect your local watershed. As sports turf mangers, we should highlight and showcase our many different types of envi- ronmental stewardship to promote sports turf property for the general public. Together, we could reach over a million people a year through sporting events thorough outreach and education. We can filter over a billion gallons of storm water pollutants and conserve a million gallons of fuel and tons and tons food waste and yard waste through composting. ST. Mary's College of Maryland's president, Dr. Joseph Urgo, is committed to protecting our natural resources. He stresses for all of us in every department on campus to be educators in everything we do regardless if we are faculty, staff or administration. His vision is for us to help him make our campus a learning environ- ment and then it can become a positive one with endless possibilities. Just like president Urgo goal if we work to- gether through teamwork, then we can rally to- gether to protect our nation's athletic fields and set example on to how to reduce are carbon footprint and storm water pollutants. ■ Kevin Mercer is superintendent of grounds at St. Mary's College of Maryland. www.stma.org SportsTurf 19