The Softball World Series recognized the Oregon STMA chapter for volunteering a field day at Alpenrose Stadium before the event, which is being held this week. Mike Hebrard of Athletic Field Design led the group on the field in preparations and represented the Oregon Chapter at the game and presentation.
Report from Mike Hebrard:
We had 25 attendees for our 1st ever volunteer event for the Oregon Chapter. We currently have 90 members and growing. I have been the Little League Softball World Series Tournament Groundskeeper since it got moved from Kalamazoo 17 years ago. I have not had any volunteers from District 4 that host the event so I approached our Chapter and request their help and support. One of the complaints I hear from our members is during our chapter events they don’t get to do anything, just listen to the speakers. So I called their Bluff! LOL, I do live on Bluff Drive!
The West field is one of 3 @ Alpenrose Dairy and has primarily been used for practice. 2 years ago the WS committee through in a Challenger Game, (special program by Little League) without my knowledge. Since I’m working on the other game fields with HS and college students the this field tends to get over looked and under maintained. With the Chapter event we were able to sod cut high areas, regrade and sod the back edges 7′ wide, foul base lines, home plate mound circle and coaches boxes. Since we had a good number of helpers, I put them over to the other fields, extending a quick coupler outlet to the back arc of East. (We needed another outlet since I was requested to strip that and the Main field for the WS and reposition 4 heads in the main out field that weren’t properly spaced when we put irrigation in about 10 years ago.
We had volunteers from Ewing Irrigation, Oregon Turf and Trees, Pro Turf Solution, Profile Products, Target Specialty, EnviroLogic Resources, Portland Parks, Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation, Willamalane Parks, and other local citizens.
Donations included a couple of pallets of sod from Oregon Turf, Alpenrose paid for the big roll for the back arcs of the 3 fields, Ewing provided the Bar-B-Que and our chapter proved the drinks.
Alpenrose did host the Ice Cream social afterwards!
Check out the website for pictures from the Alpenrose project. www.oregonsportsturfmanagers.org