Between the Lines
Between the Lines Dan Douglas: A Career of Distinguished Service in Sports Turf
D
an Douglas’s 35-year career in Sports Turf Management in many ways parallels the growth of the industry in Pennsylvania. President of the Keystone Athletic Field Managers Organization (KAFMO) since its inception in 1993 and Eastern PA Turf Conference committee chairman since 2018, Dan has been named the Pennsylvania Turfgrass Council’s George Hamilton Distinguished Service Award recipient for 2019. This award is presented to individuals who have exhibited outstanding service to the turfgrass industry. It is considered PTC’s highest individual honor and Dan was recognized by the membership in a formal ceremony at the Penn State Golf Turf Conference at University Park last November. Dan has previously been honored five times as the Minor League Baseball Eastern League Groundskeeper of the Year, twice as the STMA/MiLB Sports Field Manager of the Year, and in 2001 received STMA’s highest honor, the Harry C. Gill Founders Award. We asked him to look back and share some of his career milestones with others in the field.
Early Days What draws a young man to turf management? Dan started playing golf at the age of eight and so had been around turf most of his life, but at Penn State he started out as a forestry major and then switched to soil conservation. “It wasn’t until one of my general agriculture classes took us out onto the playing field at Beaver Stadium that I got
hooked on turf, and more specifically, sports turf,” he recalls. During Dan’s senior year in 1986, Penn state alumnus Joe Ketterer recruited him to work for a landscape contracting company in Virginia. One of the client sites was George Mason University, which was rapidly expanding their athletic programs and facilities. GMU hired him away from the landscape contracting company so he could concentrate on making their playing fields as safe and playable as possible — priorities that still form the gold standard of sports turf management. “At the time I was one of the first groundskeepers to carry the title ‘Sports Turf Manager’ for a university’s athletic department,” he remembers. Five years later and just months after marrying his wife, Cathy, Dan Douglas got a call from Dr. Waddington at Penn State to say that the Reading Phillies were looking for a full-time groundskeeper. Most minor league teams didn’t put much effort into their playing fields at that time, so this was a unique opportunity. The owner of the Reading Phillies, Craig Stein, is a Penn State alumnus who shared his vision. Thanks to the support he has received from the Reading Phillies organization, he has been able to make Minor League Baseball groundskeeping a satisfying 30-year career.
KAFMO and the PTC A few years after arriving in Reading, Dan Douglas was approached by Penn State Extension educators Don Fowler and Jim Welshans. The fairly new Sports
Keystone Athletic Field Managers Organization 1451 Peter’s Mountain Road Dauphin, PA 17018-9504 www.KAFMO.org • Email: KAFMO@aol.com
14 Pennsylvania Turfgrass • Spring 2020
Turf Managers Association was growing and looking to form state chapters. Don and Jim recruited him to help form the Pennsylvania chapter, which became the Keystone Athletic Field Managers Organization (KAFMO). KAFMO now has over 350 members and is involved in education, scholarships, awards, and raising funds for sports turf research. Dan is grateful to the Reading Fightin Phils organization, his family, and dozens of past board members for making it possible for him to stay directly involved with KAFMO over three decades. Dan says his initial involvement with the Pennsylvania Turfgrass Council was “mostly me being selfish for the members of KAFMO.” He describes the PTC conferences and trade shows of the early nineties as “legendary” and says the behind-the-scenes experiences he had and the connections he made there were instrumental in the success of KAFMO. As KAFMO was gaining its footing, the PTC, the Penn State Turf program and Penn State Extension provided a strong foundation for its development. Since 2000, Dan has served two six-year terms on the board of the Pennsylvania Turfgrass Council. He sees his involvement as a PTC director raising money for turfgrass research now as “in a way giving back to the programs that supported my professional life and the accomplishments of KAFMO.”
High Points When asked to describe a high point in his professional life, Dan Douglas immediately flashed back to the year 2012.
Contact: Linda Kulp, Executive Secretary Phone: 717-497-4154 kulp1451@gmail.com
Contact: Dan Douglas, President Phone: 610-375-8469 x 212 KAFMO@aol.com
