Education Spotlight

Education Spotlight on Ashdown Turfgrass with Director Chuck Cross

Ashdown 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 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.

What are your goals for the future of the program?

Going forward, I think I’m going to have two classes next year, I’m hoping to have Turf 1 and Turf 2. It took us a while to teach the kids how to work the blower, the weed eater, the mower, and then real mowers you have to do a ton of maintenance on, so that took a lot of time up. To have two different classes where the underclassmen, we can teach them how to work the equipment and the next year they go into the other one and we’re just ready to roll — paint fields and there’s not a lot of teaching maintenance and safety and all that in the next class.

Also, I’ve had three other schools get in contact with me to see how they can get started, and that would be a goal of mine and maybe Mike’s, Karen’s and all the people in turfgrass.

How can working turf professionals support this program and how can they help you guys with whatever path you may take in the future?

We could use everything you’re not using. I have about 13 kids right now, have one large fairway mower, one weed eater, two blowers. So any equipment that they’re not using, even if it’s just slightly broken, because we have a really good maintenance guy here at Ashdown, we could use it if it’s not valuable to them. Also, anytime they want to Zoom and teach the kids, because those guys know way more. I’m just spreading the word. The big companies could help out a lot, and I know they have – even things like the guys at Davis Seed Company did with getting us tee shirts for the kids.

Have there been any other surprises along the lines with who your students are and what they do?

Yes, the majority of our students are baseball players, they’ve been guys that have helped me over the years, so that’s where I drew interest. When I started asking kids, do you want to be in turf management, we started getting girls, we started getting different ethnicities, and our class is very diverse. No knock on the guys, but the girls work really, extremely hard. You give them a task and they complete it pretty quickly and they do a great job. There’s a ton more kids at Ashdown that want to be in it and I’m hoping that we can get them in it next year so that we can just give them opportunities for good jobs. •

For the full interview, check out our podcast with Chuck on THETURFZONE.COM