M E MBER SPOTLIG HT
RYAN STOREY TTA SECRETARY / TREASURER
SPORTS TURF MANAGER AT VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY Tennessee Turfgrass Magazine: How did you get into turfgrass management? Ryan Storey: I loved baseball my whole life and played as long as I could until I figured out it wasn’t going to pay bills. I had a mentor back home in Bill Marbet, who got me into turfgrass. Once I found out I wasn’t going to play ball, he was like, “Well, you like working on ball fields, let’s see what we can do.” He had a contact down at Mississippi State and had a job lined up for me on the grounds crew. So I went to Mississippi for a four-year education in turfgrass management. TTM: What was the career path, once you got out of school, all of those different jobs and moves, did you go in as a sports turf manager? How did you progress to get to where you are today? RS: When I graduated from Mississippi State, I wanted to stay close to Starkville. I wanted to stay close to my wife (we weren’t married at the time), so I took a job at Ole Miss as the Assistant Sports Turf Manager doing all of their athletic fields and facilities. Once my wife graduated, we got married and she moved in and we hung around for a little while. She’d never lived further than an hour and a half away from home, so she
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TENNESSEE TURFGRASS APRIL/MAY 2020 Email TTA at: info@ttaonline.org
