FIELD OF THE YEAR COLLEGE SOCCER
SportsField Management( SFM): Congratulations on the Field of the Year win. What are you most proud of with this win? Brandon Hardin: Our soccer field is our oldest field on campus, so to see it get this recognition means the world to us.
SFM: What were the biggest challenges you have faced with the winning field, and how have you approached those challenges? Hardin: Little to no downtime is always a challenge( we have a very small window to get our things done); and weather is another concern. For example, we received more than a foot of rain in just the month of May( 2025), and received another 6 inches of rain in four hours— which is the ninth highest amount of rain in a 24-hour window in the 132 years of data that we have.
SFM: Can you share a little about your overall management approach to the winning field and what you feel have been the most important aspects to getting this field to an awardwinning level? Hardin: A soccer pitch is agronomically maintained a lot more tediously than a football field. Whereas with most fields we concentrate on footing and surface hardness numbers, for soccer we have the added variables of ball roll and ball skip— along with all the other factors that we look at daily.
14 SportsField Management | August 2025 sportsfieldmanagementonline. com