Determining ways to maintain athletic fields without pesticides can cause even the best turf managers to stumble – literally. There is a fine line between aesthetics and safety when talking about athletic fields, according to UConn researchers who are studying the best practices to comply with a 4-year-old law banning pesticide use on school grounds that serve students through grade eight.
We asked some of the people in charge of 2-year turfgrass programs at colleges and universities across the country to update us on those programs. Here are the responses: What have been some significant changes in your program over the past 5 years? What are the biggest challenges facing 2-year programs in the next 5 years? How does your internship program operate? How can the sports turf industry best support 2-year turfgrass programs?
The current heightened focus on athlete safety has increased the scrutiny of all potential contributors to athlete injury, including the playing surface. In fact, all NFL fields are now tested and certified before every game using a set of "recommended practices." These include tests such as field hardness (Gmax), soil moisture, infill depth, and visual inspections, depending on the surface type.
Tournament season is supposed to be memorable for all involved, from the teams and players to the parents and spectators who spend an entire weekend — or longer — at the tournament site. Field managers at any level of play can improve their fields with a few easy steps to ensure that players and spectators are presented with a tournament-ready field that is both presentable and playable.
The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District and the Turfgrass Information Center have announced the availability of the Noer/ Milorganite Image Collection website. This collection, sometimes known as the "Noer slides," currently features almost 13,000 35-mm slide images shot by O. J. Noer, and later, Charlie Wilson, Jim Latham and others. The digital archive is searchable, may be browsed by year or location, and can be accessed at: http://noermmsd.lib.msu.edu.
Blame the polar vortex. "This is Mother Nature at its finest," Al Capitos said [last week]. Capitos was standing inside Purdue's Ross-Ade Stadium on a brown patch, near what is believed to be the 50-yard line. Hard to tell with the brown overpowering the green. The prolonged periods of subzero temperatures killed the Bermuda grass. Not just at Purdue. Other stadiums are seeing the same color, and it's not green.
