Insights from an Internship

By Ava Veith

This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to intern with the Kansas City (KC) Current grounds crew as their playing surface data technician. The KC Current is a professional women’s soccer team competing in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), the highest level of professional women’s soccer in the United States. As a former Division I soccer player at Virginia Tech, getting to work with a professional team like this was truly a dream come true.

I am currently a master’s student at Virginia Tech under Dr. David McCall, with plans to defend my thesis and graduate in December 2025. I then plan to begin my Ph.D. at Penn State, working with Dr. Chase Straw. My research focuses on athletic field variability and athlete-surface interactions, with the ultimate goal of helping sports field managers make data-driven decisions to create the most consistent, safe and high-performing playing surfaces possible.

It’s difficult to put into words how much this experience meant to me. I’m incredibly grateful to Head Groundskeeper Jerad Minnick and Assistant Groundskeeper Mira Emma for believing in me and bringing me on board as an intern this summer. The role was a perfect match for my passion for research, and it showed me how fulfilling it can be to apply what I have learned so far as a graduate student to real-world settings.

Every day felt like an opportunity for a mini research project. I loved being able to use technology and all the testing equipment available to quantify how the playing surface changed before and after events like a major rainfall, athlete traffic from matches or training, and various management practices such as aeration (including solid tine, deep tine and cross tine methods, as well as different aerating speeds), verticutting, rolling, and much more. These hands-on experiments gave me a much deeper understanding of how various factors affect field performance. I believe this insight is not only valuable for my current graduate studies, but also for my aspiring future career in sports surface research.

I collected data at the KC Current stadium (CPKC Stadium) and training fields (The University of Kansas Health System Training Center). I used a variety of tools and technologies such as the time domain reflectometer (or TDR, which measures volumetric water content), Clegg hammer (surface hardness), DelTec FieldTester (force reduction, energy restitution and vertical deformation), and DelTec rotational resistance tester (shear strength) to assess surface conditions. I also had the chance to work with tools I hadn’t used before, including the POGO (soil moisture), TurfRad (Portable L-band Radiometer measuring soil moisture) and CropCircle (leaf density and nitrogen content). The TurfRad and CropCircle sensors had just arrived when I started this summer, so it was a great learning experience not only getting to use them, but also setting them up and gaining a deeper understanding of how they work. I analyzed the data I collected and shared results with Jerad and Mira, who sometimes used it to inform management decisions, which is an incredibly rewarding experience that reinforced to me the practical value of research.

Specifically, the TurfRad has most commonly been used on golf courses to map soil moisture variability for irrigation efficiency. We wanted to use the TurfRad in an athletic field setting, where within-field moisture variability can raise playability and safety concerns. Stadium structures presented challenges, as the roof interfered with the radiometer and ultimately affected soil moisture readings. Dr. Straw came for a short visit in July, and we collected data to evaluate how the TurfRad’s soil moisture readings, when mounted at various angles to minimize roof interference, compared with ground-truth measurements from a TDR, Clegg hammer, NDVI meter, as well as surface temperature readings.

In June, I had the honor of presenting some of the work I had done so far during the MoKan SFMA Summer Field Day, hosted at CPKC Stadium. My 45-minute presentation, titled “The Science Behind the Pitch: Surface Testing at CPKC Stadium and Training Grounds” was displayed on the stadium’s video board, which was surreal. Sharing my work with professionals in the sports field management industry was one of the highlights of my summer.

Just when I thought my summer in KC couldn’t get any better, KC Current acquired another professional women’s soccer team from Denmark called HB Køge. It just so happens that Emma Pelkowski, one of my former teammates (and best friends) from Virginia Tech is on that team. HB Køge spent a week training at the facility and even scrimmaged the KC Current. I was so grateful the KC Current reunited me with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. Experiences like that, and people like her, are why I love being a graduate student and am so passionate about researching athlete-surface interactions.

Overall, my time with the KC Current grounds crew was everything I hoped it would be and more. I’m so thankful for the opportunity to learn from some of the best sports field managers in the industry. From collecting data, mowing, painting, aerating, rolling, spraying and spreading to joking around with the rest of the crew, this summer was one I’ll always cherish.

Ava Veith is a graduate research assistant at Virginia Tech, and a former Division I soccer player at Virginia Tech.