Start your conference education at 8 a.m. on Wed., Jan. 13, 2010 with the pre-conference workshop: Getting the most out of your water: managing athletic fields with reduced or no irrigation, taught by Doug Karcher, Ph.D., from the University of Arkansas. This session will cover drought tolerant cultivars, wetting agent application, and how to use probes for irrigation scheduling to reduce the amount of water necessary to produce a high quality sports field. Next, hear Ed McCoy, Ph.D. from The Ohio State University present Athletic field drainage – subsurface water flow made visible, from 10:15-12:15 p.m. Learn about drainage principles for a variety of soil types and soil profile conditions.
Choose from four workshops from 2 – 4 p.m. At Grass art: mowing patterns and beyond, Matt Anderson from the Lansing Lugnuts and Greg Salyer from the West Michigan Whitecaps will instruct on how to create patterns in turfgrass without using paint. Weather 101, taught by Brad Jakubowski, Doane College and Larry DiVito, Minnesota Twins, is a popular repeat from the 2009 conference. This interactive session will help you to interpret daily weather reports, maps and forecasts for daily turfgrass management. A panel of turfgrass experts will discuss Warm season athletic field management. Workshop participants will be able to ask questions of panelists Grady Miller, Ph.D., NC State University and John Sorochan, Ph.D., from the University of Tennessee. Conference attendees can also attend the Field of the Year (FOY) workshop on What makes a strong FOY candidate presented by previous FOY winners and current judges including Andrew Gossel, Athletic Director for Covenant Christian High School, Patrick Coakley, CSFM, Sports Construction Management Inc., Martin Kaufman, CSFM at Ensworth Schools, and Gerald Landby from Carroll College.
All of these workshops are included in the full conference registration fee.
Wednesday pre-conference workshops expanded for STMA Orlando Conference.