www.stma.org January 2016 | SportsTurf 41
different outdoor locations around the
school. The sod roots in September were
more than twice as long as they were in
July, and the average ground moisture
extended almost three times deeper from
July to September. According to Prine,
"It's clear to me that this product is doing
what I was told it was going to. We have
restored our soil and turf back to a healthy
condition using half as much water, with
the Magnation product. And it's much
more time- and cost-effective than using
any type of wetting agent to try to get sim-
ilar results. The product is already paying
for itself after only several months."
DICK'S SPORTING GOODS PARK,
COMMERCE CITY, CO
To verify the results that Prine experi-
enced at the Discovery School, we trav-
eled to a completely different location to
investigate another recent customer of
this seemingly incredible water treatment
system. Commerce City is home to Dick's
Sporting Goods Park, also known as DSG
Park, a soccer-specific stadium that hosts
the Colorado Rapids professional soccer
team. In addition to the stadium, DSG
Park offers 25 soccer fields; 23 of them use
natural grass that must be consistently
maintained and kept healthy. Phil Mc-
Quade, the current director of turf at DSG
Park and Stadium, has been employed by
the complex since it opened in 2007, and
was looking for a solution to help main-
tain healthy coverage on these fields.
"We're located in a particularly high-
wind area and because of this we often
experience dry spots in the turf. Since
people who use these fields expect the
grounds to be in top shape, we needed to
find a sustainable solution to this prob-
lem." McQuade discovered the Magnation
products at a local trade show and decided
to experiment. "Surrounding the stadium,
we have four pods with six fields in each
pod. These fields are regularly used for
soccer, lacrosse, football, you name it. We
decided to test out the product by install-
ing a Magnation unit in the irrigation sys-
tem to just one of our pods. That was in
April of 2015, and now we (myself, my as-
sistant and our irrigation consultant) are
definitely seeing a reduction of dry spots.
Not only have the areas of dryness shrunk,
but the turf is now coming in thicker."
Convinced by the tangible results they
got on these six fields, McQuade just pur-
chased an additional unit to install for
another pod of fields. "We think there is a
definite benefit to using this water treat-
ment," said McQuade. "We're also testing
an area inside the large stadium; a couple
of berms that are south-facing and right
by a building. They are constantly being
baked by sunlight all day. So we wanted
to see what would happen if we put Mag-
nation on the irrigation heads in that
section."
