Cover Story
Improving
High School Sports Fields By Andrew S. McNitt, Ph.D.
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ooking to upgrade or rehab your natural turfgrass fields this growing season? While every situation is different and I can’t cover all contingencies, I’m going to share my general experience in working with high schools in Pennsylvania. The most important thing to start with is an assessment of drainage, especially considering the precipitation we had in most parts of the state during 2018. If the crown of the field is worn out and you are playing in a soup bowl (Figure 1), there is no sense throwing any additional resources at this field until the crown is reestablished. I’m not naïve. I understand that asking for the addition of good quality compost, a regrade, and sod is a big ask and difficult to get approved. The point is that you must keep asking because that is the factor limiting the quality of the field. I advise against trying to create band-aid solutions. Money will be wasted and the opportunity to get the larger project approved may be compromised. At least ask to get some bids on the larger resod project. I understand a little about the bidding process inside a school district and the complaints that are lodged if a bid goes to a contractor outside the district. My advice is to divide the project into pieces, maybe for both the construction and the design. An architect or project manager is not always needed on a job of this size but sometimes it’s money well spent. Allow your local architect to do any permitting required, etc. and ask if the architect would then accept a sub who specializes in the finish specifications for athletic fields. Similarly, ask that the trucking for the compost and maybe application tilling and rough grading be bid to local contractors but bid the finish work to a sport construction specialist. Keep asking/explaining in a respectful manner. I often tell my students: “it’s not necessarily the best grass growers who rise to the top of this industry, it’s usually the best communicators, because they can effectively communicate the issues to the administrators who control the purse strings and are able to garner the resources needed to create a quality turfgrass surface.” Last season the ground stayed wet regardless of a crown. Creating a nearly all-weather playing surface using sand is
8 Pennsylvania Turfgrass • Summer 2019
beyond the scope of this article but you can get some great information by googling ‘Michigan State Sand Cap System’ or by using this link: https://bit.ly/2X4l4Z1. Let’s say you have a crown and the field drains adequately during ‘normal precip years.’ Now what is the most important item you can spend your money on? The answer: PEOPLE. Again, a tough sell, but that is the correct answer. There is no magic potion you can spray on the field to suddenly make it hold up to wear better. It’s really just doing the basics really well like in the Karate Kid. It’s wax on, wax off. If you do basic maintenance really well, you’re 85% of the way there. So again, you have to communicate the need. Numbers help. How long does it take to trailer the mowers to a grade school campus, mow, trim, clean up and return? Show the administrators, on paper, where all the man-hours are going. If adequate drainage is in place, you will need additional labor to improve the quality of the fields, pure and simple. It would be a great help if in the summer you could hire a few retired folks to do some mowing in the common areas, but often the labor structure in school districts won’t allow that. You need butts on mower seats because almost everything I talk about from here on requires you to make the grass grow faster and if the grass is growing faster, you will have to mow more often. Golf course fairways are mowed pretty much every other day. Penn State’s Beaver Stadium is mowed about 3 times per week during much of the year. Figure 2 shows two plots with exactly the same care. Simulated soccer-type wear was applied evenly to both. The one on the left was mowed once per week while the one on the right was mowed 3 times per week. Nothing else differed. Mow often with a high-quality mower. It can be a rotary, but it should be adjusted with a sharp blade to aid in turf health. A trick I learned from Dr. Dave Minner at Iowa State: Don’t spread your resources out evenly among all your fields. Create a showcase field and give it the resources it needs perhaps at the expense of some other fields. Why? Because if you spread out meager resources equally, the fields will all be average and maybe the administrator’s view of your sports field management abilities will also be average. When you ask for more
