The inaugural National Turfgrass Science Invitational will take place February 3-5, 2024, during the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) Conference and Trade Show in San Diego, with participants having access to professional development opportunities at the conference and trade show in addition to the competition. The event will alternate between the conferences of GCSAA and the Sports Field Management Association (SFMA) in future years.
This competitive event for high school agricultural education students will emphasize skills in turfgrass science. During the event, competitors will engage in individual and team activities on topics such as turfgrass identification, playing surface set-up, equipment operation and best management practices. They will also travel to a San Diego-area golf course for practicums, which test the hands-on and observational skills of the competitors.
The 2025 National Turfgrass Science Invitational is endorsed by FFA and open to FFA members. Teams are not currently required to qualify at the local or state level to participate in this invitational. Recognition of winners and teams who competed at the invitational will be held in conjunction with the GCSAA Conference.
According to Carson Letot, Ph.D., event superintendent, turfgrass science, FFA national competitions have typically been diverse competitions that include everything from row crops to livestock to forestry. These events provide an outlet for students to showcase demonstrated knowledge and skill sets, and give them insight into what that would be like as a career choice.
Turfgrass has been well represented in the national FFA organizations, but typically through FFA’s proficiencies, which students can formalize as a supervised agricultural experience (SAE). Students would develop and build upon those proficiencies over time, and proficiency finalists for turfgrass science would be judged at the national level. However, despite the rich tradition of the proficiencies, there was never a national competition or career development event (CDE) for turfgrass.
According to Letot, in fall of 2023, individuals from GCSAA, SFMA and university turfgrass science faculty members began discussing the possibility of a national competition centered on curriculum and needed resources. At that point, however, the conversations didn’t perpetuate into the invitational. Letot, who is an instructor at Sandhills Community College in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and coordinator for the USGA Greenkeeper Apprenticeship Program, leveraged his background as a turfgrass science educator and experience with FFA competitions to help launch this competition at the national level.
“I started planning and helping out. We have a really good executive leadership team,” he said. “Shelia Finney and Leann Cooper from GCSAA have been unbelievable advocates for this competition. Without them, this would not be happening. Will Waidelich and Madeline Young are the FAA emissaries who will observe the competition this year, help us out and give us guidance.
“This competition is being titled as an invitational, as a pilot, for it to be then proposed to the National FFA Foundation Board,” Letot added. “If it gets approval, it’ll become a national career development event. So the goal is that the ‘invitational’ moniker lasts a year, and after that it will be known as the National Turfgrass Science CDE.”
Letot also credited Geoff Rinehart and Chase Straw, Ph.D., as well as SFMA Education Manager Jennifer McLendon with communication and organization of the event – especially with university faculty and industry associations.
According to Letot, the unique aspect of this competition is that it involves both the golf course management and sports field management industries.
“Given that a lot of these students are looking at jobs in the golf course industry, it made sense to start out with golf courses and GCSAA as that host,” he said. “But SFMA is going to make a tremendous host because their arena is something that is on the doorstep of every high school in the United States. So we’ve decided to have this alternate back and forth each year between the SFMA and GCSAA national conferences.”
According to Letot, having a national competition will hopefully have a trickle-down effect in future years that will foster more state competitions that are able to adopt the same competition model and resources. “Our goal is that we get most every state where turfgrass science is a viable industry hosting a state competition to send their winners on to national,” he said.
For the inaugural invitational, there are currently 12 teams of four registered to compete. Teachers will get to take classes while their students are competing; and on the following day the students and the teachers will be provided with continuing professional development before an award ceremony.
There are three things Letot would like to accomplish with the inaugural event.
“First is that the kids have fun,” he said. “And I’m not just saying that just to be cliche. I have witnessed this competition at the state level and I have witnessed other FFA events and career development events. We try to do a good job at standardizing the competition to make it fair for everybody, provide a safe space for the students to compete, and for it to be a repeatable competition every year. But oftentimes it gets boring; they’re out there for too long and it’s not a simulation of the job – it becomes drudgery.
“So my goal as I’m watching the competition – and as I get feedback at the end – is that the kids actually felt like they were doing something and having fun,” he added. “There are a lot of other times where we can be academic; this is not one of those times. We don’t want them to play school; we want them to have a taste of the industry. It’s a fast-paced, skill-involved industry, and we want then to see that.”
Letot’s second objective is to get the curriculum into the hands of the teachers and give them the confidence to bring turfgrass science into their classrooms in a significant way and find unique ways to teach the subject. He also hopes teachers are empowered to work with community members such as golf course superintendents and sports field managers – either via field trips or in the classroom – as partnerships that provide students with experiential learning opportunities.
Development of industry partnerships is the third thing Letot would like to come out of the invitational. “If they have some unique ways that their industry or their company can provide some educational support to teachers and students, we would like for them to see it and jump on board. This is a train that we hope starts to leave the station slowly and they still have enough time to pick up the pace and jump on board.”
According to Letot, the first year of the competition is going to be a learning opportunity, and it will be golf-centric because it is being held at the GCSAA Conference and Trade Show. However, as the event shifts to the SFMA Conference in 2026, event organizers will be assembling a task force of sports field management industry professionals to guide the direction of the competition.
“We will have very unique skill sets needed to prepare a field,” he said. “So we will need folks that are in the sports field arena to help us out as part of the working group and the committee that helps guide those practicums. We want to make sure those students are going to do something that’s a preview and gives them a taste of the industry, but is also fun and engaging. We have a good deal of ideas, but we could use a good deal more; so we will need all hands on deck.”
