COV E R S TO RY
A New Standard for
SPOR TS FIELD MANAGEMENT By Barry Stewart, Ph.D. Associate Professor – Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Mississippi State University
A
thletic field managers combine science, art, and long hours of hard work to provide playing surfaces that are safe, playable, and aesthetically pleasing. As Arkansas Turfgrass Association members know, there are numerous “standards” that give guidance to sports turf managers as to what minimums should be for athletics fields. Textbooks like the excellent “Sport Fields: Design, Construction and Maintenance” by Puhalla, Krans and Goatley, and Standard Test Methods, Specifications and Guides, like those published by ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials) provide guidance for what practices should be used to create safe and playable athletic fields. Awareness of these standards becomes important if the management of a field ever comes into question such as could happen in a dispute over liability. The STMA (Sports Turf Managers Association) has recently released “Best Management Practices for the Sports Field Manager: A Professional Guide for Environmental Sports Field Management” which represents a new standard. A great thing about this publication is that it is available for free. It was developed by many volunteers serving STMA from industry and academia, as well as the STMA staff. If you are a sports field manager, you should read this manual before you head into your 2022 field management season. You may find an idea or two you can implement, and it would be a good refresher for even the most seasoned professional. For years I have used Puhalla, Krans and Goatley as a textbook for my PSS 4443 Athletic Field Management Course at Mississippi State University. I will still recommend it as a supporting book for this class, but this semester I am going to use STMA’s “Best Management Practices for the Sports Field Manager” as my “textbook”.
10 • A R K A N S A S T U R F G R A S S • Spring 2022
