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
"I guess we were lucky that they didn't do this last summer which was the worst summer I can remember but not long after they turned off my water we hit tempera- tures in the low 100's," Wood said. Dave Roesch has been the Supervisor of Landscape Maintenance at the college for more than 20 years and described the origi- nal construction of this soccer field as less than ideal. "The field was build in the mid 1980's and was designed to have a herring bone drainage system through the whole site but the design was changed during construction and the decision was made to make this site a recharge storm water basin and because of the this the construction company didn't have room for a proper drainage system." A series of corrugated pipes were laid in a bed of gravel and cov- ered with a landscape fabric 14 inches below a mix of native soil, which is pre- dominately a sandy loam, and a collection of subsoils. "The field has always caused us drainage problems especially before we broke through the landscape fabric that held water just below the playing surface, and the soil mix was not what anyone would want on their stadium field," Wood said. Stockton College of New Jersey was es- tablished in the late 1960's and is the home of the Stockton Ospreys men's soccer team, the 2001 NCAA Division III national champions. The stadium field is currently used almost exclusively for the men's soccer games. Stockton College does not have a football team so men's soccer takes on a highlighted spot in the sports program at the college. David Wood manages this field along with four practice soccer fields, al- most 20 acres of intramural fields, one baseball field, one softball field and a new synthetic sports turf field as well as turf and landscape responsibilities across the 1,600 acre campus. On July 7 the resurfacing work began on the track that completely encompasses the main soccer field. A rubber based poly- mer composite was used and a total of five coats were needed to finish the project. "The coating only takes a few minutes to dry but they can only apply the material in perfect conditions so the process ended up taking a couple of weeks to finish. The ma- terial used on the track can easily drift so if www.stma.org SportsTurf 23 Soil Report