Vice President’s Letter

Beyond "Leave No Trace"

Those that know me, know that I’m a fisherman. I love smallmouth bass. I love the river. I love the peace and solace that I find floating in my beatup kayak through our small Ozark streams. I love sharing those experiences with my wife and sons and friends. There is a saying outdoors folks use, “leave no trace,” which I strictly abide by. But, as I get older, I’ve started to realize, “leave no trace” isn’t enough. I have a passion for not only preserving what we have but making it better for future generations.

What the heck does that have to do with turfgrass…

Early in my career, I was dealing with a very high maintenance customer at a very high-profile commercial property. They had tall fescue grass, very poor irrigation, and had a 4th of July celebration every year with 10,000 plus people trampling all over it — a recipe for disaster. As their turf professional, I tried my best to explain the difficulty of that situation. In a big meeting with the powers that be, their facility manager responded to my explanation, “God doesn’t want us to just maintain what we have. He wants us to enhance it.” I looked him dead in the eye and said, “God would have planted zoysia grass and put in working irrigation.”

As much as I joke about it, that conversation has stuck with me for nearly 20 years. Do you view yourself as a “turf manager” or someone whose job it is to “enhance”? In our work, is it enough to just “leave no trace”? Should our goal be to leave things like they were when we got there? Or do we want them to be better for those that follow?

We all work with living plants. Which means, sometimes maintaining is the best option. However, there are times when we have opportunities to enhance. Maybe it’s building a new tee box or adding a native area on your golf course. Or maybe it’s pushing the city to let you overseed your baseball fields to promote more tournament play. But maybe also it’s pouring into your assistant superintendents some of your passion, experience, and life. Maybe it’s taking your crew leads to lunch once a month so you know more about their families and aspirations outside of work. Maybe it’s simply caring about your office staff and them knowing you’ve got their back. Those small conversations are so big. They help your team buy into the goals of your organization. Enhancing the grounds we manage often starts with enhancing the experiences of our team.

One great example in our industry of someone that went far beyond “leave no trace” is my friend Keith Ihms. I want to personally congratulate Keith on his recent retirement! I have gotten to know Keith over the past few years through Razorback Baseball of all things. He has been, and will continue to be, an amazing ambassador for the turfgrass industry and our state. He is definitely someone we can all learn from about enhancing both the properties we manage as well as the experiences of the folks that help us manage them. Congratulations Keith! I’m so happy for you, Paula, and your family! Enjoy it my friend.

Until next time, wishing you all the best!

Josh Landreth

ATA Vice President