COV E R S TO RY
EDUCATION SPOTLIGHT on
ASHDOWN
TURFGRASS with DIRECTOR CHUCK CROSS
A
shdown High School’s Turf Management Program may have just finished its inaugural year, but it is poised to bring many up and coming workers into the turfgrass industry. Chuck Cross, the founder and director of the program, shared some reflections on year one and goals for the years to come. How was the Turf Management program started? It started with me looking at turfgrass programs through social media. I’d been doing it on my own, with the help of the baseball team and assistant coaches in the last seven years, and I ran upon South Forsythe, Georgia’s Twitter page. I screenshot it and sent it to our superintendent, and said, “We should think about doing this next year at Ashdown,” and he said, “Let’s just start it right now.” The superintendent, the athletic director, the curriculum director, the principals have been great, the counselors, because they had to change schedules. We started the class as soon as we came back from Christmas break, in January 2021. Did you have a lot of student interest? Did they know about turf management as a career path? I think probably two or three of my baseball players have gone on to do small lawn businesses, and then we have BWI, in Texarkana, and we have a couple guys that work over there, and then we have a bunch of golf courses around. When I started telling P.E. kids, baseball and football players that I was going to have a class, I had a lot of interest. I had to downsize it for the first year, but I think next year it’s going to be fairly big. Where does all the information come from as you’re learning and building the program and the kids are learning it too? I’ve been a part of baseball for probably 20+ years and the support with baseball, the group of baseball coaches are awesome. But it doesn’t compare to the turfgrass community. I just started
8 • A R K A N S A S T U R F G R A S S • Summer 2021
the Twitter account and I got with Mike Richardson on how we’re going to start this thing and he kind of mentored me, just through email. He has been great. The turfgrass community is unreal. I can’t compare it to anybody because nobody is out to get you, they’re all out to help you. And Mike has been great, Karen has been great. And then the superintendent at Texarkana Country Club, Kenny Sawyer, if I need anything I call him, and Brad Essary at Turface, he’s been really good. What have your students learned and worked on this school year?
We started in the fall with overseeding the football field with perennial ryegrass. After that, just working on the baseball and softball field – edging, weed eating, fertilizer, pesticides (which I do that on my own, and they watch), renovating the mound, renovating the mound for softball. Pretty much everything when it comes to sports turf management. I did take the kids one day to the Conference USA tournament, it was at Texarkana Country Club and they really enjoyed that. I’ve given them all the opportunity to run the fairway mower and the one person who wanted to run it was a ninth grade girl. I had senior boys, junior boys, and the kid that ran the big fairway mower on all the athletic fields was a ninth grade girl, Kylie. It was great. I’m still learning too.
