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/442256
FROM THE SIDELINES N ext month Dr. Dave Minner's final "Q&A" column will appear facing the inside back cover of this magazine. For nearly 20 years, Dave has shared his research, experience, and plain old know-how with our readers through his answers to questions about maintaining cool-season grass fields. While we'll leave his final words up to him next month, here are some comments he shared with us via email near the end of last year: What exactly are you doing now? I am still a professor in the Horticulture Department at Iowa State University but for the past few years and for the foreseeable future I will be the EARTH Program Coordinator (Education And Resiliency Through Horticulture) located at Gifft Hill School on the island of St. John in the US Virgin Islands. Check us out at http://giffthillschool.org. Basically I run a K-12 garden program to com- plement our culinary program. We are teaching kids how to produce food in the garden and then prepare it in our kitchen as part of the school lunch program. More than 30 Iowa State interns have spent a semester with me teaching, gardening, and learning about the island as part of a global learning experience. What are the most significant changes in sports turf management you've seen in your career? Big-roll sod was one of the truly remark- able changes that occurred during my career and when it was combined with a thick cut, it provided a field that could be played on immediately after sodding. My first exposure to this came in 1993 when Vince Patterozzi sent me to Cygnet Sod in Ohio with these simple instructions: cut every piece of sod the same and make sure it is all 2 inches thick. There used to be an NFL rule that 14 days after the last baseball game was played the infield skin must be replaced with grass and big-roll sod was the reason for that ruling. I arrived in Cleveland with the first load of sod just in time to hear Bob Hope sing "Thanks for the Memories" as he and the Cleveland Indian fans bid farewell to the old Municipal Stadium. The sod laying equip- ment had not advanced to the degree of the sod harvesting equipment so it took quite a bit of finagling to get it laid. I caught a few winks of sleep somewhere behind the home dugout and woke to see the steam rising from the hot rolls under the dimmed stadium lights. We still had 14 days to grow in the sod but Vince looked at it and said, "We could paint it now and play football if we wanted" and that is indeed what still goes on today. What are you most proud of accomplishing when you look back at your career? There's no better feeling than helping people solve problems and SportsTurf gave me a great opportunity to directly connect with a truly innovative group of professionals. Many of your questions over the years have clearly shaped my research efforts to make grass athletic fields more traffic tolerant, and we also made progress in seeding rates and strategies. What are you most disappointed about in regards to today's sports turf management industry? Along the same line, I wish we could make a substantial advance in the area of specifically breeding grasses primarily for traffic tolerance. Perennial ryegrass on the cool-season side and bermudagrass on the warm-season side have car- ried us for a long time in dealing with extreme traffic; we need to look for new species and new varieties that first have far superior traffic tolerance/recovery. Forget about how attractive they are, let's make them survive in the center of a high traffic field and then we can talk about giving them curb appeal with color, texture, density, mowing and striping appearance. ■ ST Eric Schroder Editorial Director eschroder@specialtyim.com 717-805-4197 Thank you, Dr. Minner 6 SportsTurf | January 2015 www.sportsturfonline.com ePG Media/Specialty information Media 3300 Fernbrook Lane n, Suite 200, Plymouth, Mn 55447 The official Publication of The Sports Turf Managers association President: David Pinsonneault, CSFM, CPRP immediate Past President: James Michael Goatley, Jr., PhD President-elect: Allen Johnson, CSFM Secretary/Treasurer: Jeff Salmond, CSFM Vice-President Commercial: James Graff Professional Facilities: Phil McQuade academic: Jeffrey Fowler higher education: Tim Van Loo, CSFM Parks & recreation: Sarah Martin, CSFM k-12: Andrew Gossel Commercial: Doug Schattinger elected-at-Large: Mike Tarantino, CSFM elected-at-Large: Bradley Jakubowski Chief executive officer: Kim Heck STMa oFFiCe 805 new hampshire Suite e Lawrence, kS 66044 Phone: 800-323-3875 Fax: 800-366-0391 email: STMAinfo@STMA.org www.STMa.org eDiToriaL Group publisher: David Voll editorial Director: Eric Schroder Technical editor: Dr. James Brosnan art Director: Brian Snook Production Manager: Karen Kalinyak Stma editorial Communications Committee Chairman: Brad Jakubowski; Tyler Clay; Jim Cornelius, CSFM; Mark Frever, CSFM; Jamie Mehringer; Scott Stevens; and Brad Park SportsTurf (ISSN 1061-687X) (USPS 000-292) (Reg. U.S. Pat. & T.M. Off.) is published monthly by Specialty Information Media at 75 Pike Street, Port Jervis, NY 12271. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Sportsturf, PO Box 2123, Skokie, IL 60076-7823. For subscription information and requests, call Subscription Services at (847) 763-9565. Subscription rates: 1 year, $40 US & Poss.; 2 years, $65 US & Poss.; 1 year, $65 Canada/Foreign Surface, 1 year, $130 Airmail. All sub- scriptions are payable in advance in US funds. Send payments to Sportsturf, PO Box 2123, Skokie, IL 60076- 7823. Phone: (847) 763-9565. Fax: (847) 763-9569. Single copies or back issues, $8 each US/Canada; $12 Foreign. Periodicals postage paid at Port Jervis, NY and additional mailing offices. COPYRIGHT 2015, SportsTurf. Material may not be reproduced or photocopied in any form with- out the written permission of the publisher.