TURFGRASS RESEARCH
be essential to creating the guidelines for the event.
“ We’ re working on a very small scale, but we can recreate everything that we do in an 8-week period with multiple runs throughout a year,” said Fielder.“ I want to make sure that whatever failures I incur happen at that small volume. That way it’ s completely avoidable in 2026.
“ Not everything we do is going to be A + B = C,” Fielder added.“ You have all these different options that come with each stadium, and they all have their different construction and infrastructure. We want to provide a base for them to work from; and if there are any questions, we have research to be able to pull from and recommend how we would react to a particular scenario.”
According to Dickson, the research team would also like to have as many fLEX devices as possible for World Cup 26 so that they can monitor the pitches from day to day and game to game throughout the tournament.
The goal is for the field manager at the host sites to run the fLEX device, the basic operation of which only takes a few minutes to learn.
Said Dickson,“ Hopefully they will be able to do it as we’ re going, and hopefully we get daily information to help increase the research so that we can make future World Cups better.”
Added Fielder,“ We’ re just trying to be an asset and provide guidance and help not only the 16 field managers involved, but the 200- to 300-hundredplus individuals involved this project. All we’ re trying to do is play our part in bringing this tournament to North America.”
26 SportsField Management | April 2025 sportsfieldmanagementonline. com