Member Spotlight

TTA Member Spotlight on John Clintsman – Head of Grounds at Ensworth School

Tell us about your work at Ensworth and what that includes — your fields, areas you manage and how many people are on your team.

I’ve been at Ensworth for five years. I started as an assistant at our lower school campus, which is just off of West End. I’m now the Head of Grounds at the high school campus, but I oversee the lower school campus as well. We have 13 natural grass fields, about six of those are premiere, performance-style fields that we maintain at a higher level.

Between the two campuses, we sit somewhere between 150 and 200 acres of total area. I oversee the landscaping through a third party, which is Brightview. They take care of our landscape, our hardscapes and all that entails. We have a great partnership with them. They do a fantastic job of maintaining our campus grounds. My crew consists of me and four guys, and we oversee all of our sports fields and irrigation.

The Ensworth School is a well-known private school, and you’ve got some top-level athletes there. There are kids who are playing with goals of, for instance, playing Division I football, and you’ve really got some pretty high standards there. Tell us about maintaining premiere properties for those athletes.

My crew takes a lot of pride in knowing that players that play on our fields go to college. We play a very small part of it, but when we see a kid signed for Minnesota, Tennessee or Ohio State, we take a lot of pride in knowing that we provided them a highlevel sports field, but at the same time a very safe sports field.

When they play at home, I’m always very nervous when we see an injury. I’m immediately messaging the trainer – what was it? Was it caused by the field, was it caused by something else? They’ve honestly gotten in the habit of texting me as soon as they know, saying ‘not field-related’ or whatever. But knowing that these players, they’re going to the next level after playing here, our ultimate goal is to make sure that this is the best field they’ve ever played on. Not only from an aesthetics point of view, but from a safety point of view.

With the large scope of grounds and fields that you maintain, what’s the biggest challenge?

That’s a complex question… the hardest part is being able to do what we need to do when we need to do it. You accomplish that by building relationships with your coaches, and them knowing that what we do is important, so they’re usually really flexible in allowing us to do our jobs, knowing that we’re doing it for a reason. So scheduling is probably the toughest aspect.

Weather changes everything. I can be planning to go out and aerate a field today, but we might get two inches of rain the night before and I can’t accomplish my goal. So being able to be flexible, not only because of Mother Nature, but with the coaches, is probably the most important. It’s not the most challenging, because we’ve built such a good relationship with the coaches. The most challenging is accomplishing everything we need to accomplish within a certain amount of time.

At the TTA awards this year, you got the 2020 high school field of the year for the football field at Ensworth, and you received a leadership award with STMA. You also presented at the TTA conference. What does that recognition mean to you?

The leadership award was presented to a group of us that were on a committee for some work we did with STMA this year. That was a fantastic honor – honestly if I didn’t tell you I almost came to tears when I found out, I’d be lying to you. But you know every honor we’ve been presented from the very end of 2019, through the beginning of 2021, has been a great honor. Being presented Field of the Year was amazing because we didn’t apply for it this year, we kind of held off applying for it and somebody else did that for us and that was pretty amazing. Then, truthfully, just being asked to present at TTA in front of my peer group, guys that I look up to, was a great honor as well.

You’ve obviously spent a lot of time and invested in where you are and have been recognized for that, but let’s go back and talk about how you got where you are now. What was your path to get into turfgrass management and what opportunities led you to where you are now?

As a young, dumb 17-year-old, I ended up having a kid. He’ll be 21 this year. So coming out of high school, I had no clue what I wanted to do, I just knew I needed to make money. I jumped into working in warehouses and factories and things like that. I was never happy or fulfilled, I went to work to make a paycheck. I ended up, later on in life, getting divorced and trying to figure out my life at that point. I was 30 years old, where a lot of guys had already had some opportunities, I’m kind of starting over my opportunities.

I started dating my high school sweetheart and she told me, “If we’re going to make a go at this, you’re going to find something you want to do.” She said she didn’t want me coming home miserable from just a crappy day at work. So I got on at the Smyrna Golf Course as a full-time employee. I was working for Monica at the Smyrna Golf Course and she was one of those people that she wanted you to know what she knew, if you wanted to know.

I had no formal education at the time and I would ask questions about everything we did. I think I fell in love with the golf course on day one of being there, and just the knowledge that she was passing on at the time. I stayed at the golf course for two years until I didn’t see a clear path of, truthfully, just being able to make more money.

I was making very little money working all day every day, and although I loved what I did, I needed to provide better for my family. A position came open here at Ensworth as the assistant at the lower school. I realized real quick that everything I did in high school on the baseball team was kind of coming through. I was a terrible baseball player. I loved the game, but I just wasn’t very good. So I was on the team, basically as a manager and I would get to go out during the school day to drag the baseball field or chalk the lines, whatever the baseball coach didn’t have time for because he had classes. I didn’t realize there was a career choice working on sports fields.

Coming to Ensworth, I realized that being in sports turf versus golf was where I wanted to be, being able to work with these young athletes and provide them a top-level playing facility is really rewarding. And so, I was the assistant here for about two-anda-half years. During that time, I was working with the Nashville Sounds grounds crew and I ended up transitioning and working with the Tennesssee Titans grounds crew, really just the game day crew for both of those organizations, but learning more about what we do on a day-to-day basis on a professional level versus at the high school level.

In June of 2018, our Head of Grounds here at Ensworth left to pursue other opportunities, and his position was available. I interviewed for it the day it became available and went through about a two-month interim period where I was running it with the crew that we had. We were short-staffed and I was trying to run the crew with them while I was still working at the Sounds and then the Titans. But in August of 2018, I took over as the Head of Grounds here and have been in this position since.

The turfgrass industry is really made up of a lot of people who came to it in different ways, and with so many having those turfgrass science degrees or more formal education, and others learning it from experience on the field. So coming into the profession like you did, you had some ground to cover.

I did – I had a lot of make-up time. I’ve gotta make up a lot of ground and work really hard. The best thing I ever did, and probably the best thing Ensworth ever did for me was, while I was the assistant, they provided me the opportunity to do a continuing education program, and I got my certificate through the University of Georgia, so I was able to get a little bit of the educational perspective. Ensworth providing that was really great because at that time I didn’t have the funds to go back to school, but I was able to do that program online and still be working day-to-day while they paid for it. I think it was the best thing I ever asked for.

What do you do in your free time?

I have a 21, 15 and 11 year old. The 11-year-old keeps me the most busy. He plays a lot of baseball. He plays not only for Ensworth, but he also plays for his travel ball team, so we travel a lot and go to a lot of baseball. I wouldn’t have it any other way though.

I’m an avid baseball fan, a little bit of a nerd of the game. I love collecting baseball cards and doing all of that stuff. Really it started out with him, but I kind of have my own enjoyment from it now. I spend a lot of time with the kids. I’m married, I’ve got two dogs and two stupid gremlin cats. I love my dogs, the cats are my wife’s. I spend a lot of time with the family, and I have a podcast of my own with BJ Parker called Keeping It Reel. If the listeners want to check that out, we sure would appreciate it. And in all honesty, 99% of my not work time is spent especially with my 11-year-old going to baseball games and hanging out with him. The 15-yearold lives with his mom, so I don’t get to see him as much as I would like, and how much do you see a 21-year-old?

What would your advice be for people considering or already entering the turfgrass industry right now?

I actually have been thinking about this a lot because I have a guy, he just started with us back in November and he’s done an internship with the Titans on a lower end for him. He didn’t get to do a whole lot because he joined them late. He’s worked with a construction company as well. My advice to him when he came to us was just to listen. Slow down and listen, and I think that’s number one. And I think number two is like what I just told you —always know that there’s other guys around you. Meaning whether it’s where you’re working or other guys at other places around you that are willing to help you. And just don’t be scared to ask questions. So listen and ask questions. If you do those two things, then you’re gonna be okay.

Do you have any mentors in the industry?

I mentioned Monica Lalinde from the Smyrna Golf Course, which she’s no longer at the golf course. And if anybody knows where she is, I would love you to pass this along to her, because I love her for everything she taught me coming up. Not only how to be the boss I want to be, but just a lot of the minor stuff that she taught me. Thomas Trotter at the Nashville Sounds has been a huge influence on my career and also teaching me to be the kind of boss that I want to work for. He’s been fantastic and we still talk daily at this point. Dr. Goatley with Virginia Tech has been a huge influence on my career and where I’m headed. To add one more, it would be Michael Brownlee. He’s a fertilizer rep with Simplot. He’s been a huge benefit adding him not only to my life but to my career. So those four people have been very instrumental in my career.

To hear the full interview, visit TheTurfZone.com or subscribe to TheTurfZone podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.