FIELD OF THE YEAR COLLEGE BASEBALL
It would be hard for me to believe that there is another collegiate baseball field that has as much usage as ours . From collegiate events including TCU practices , visiting team practices , recruiting visits and games to summer and fall high school baseball tournaments , summer day camps with kids on weekdays , or hitting and pitching camps geared for soon-to-graduate high schoolers , there ’ s seldom a day that goes by where someone isn ’ t on the field . The words adaptability and flexibility have been said many times in regard to working around all the events that occurred throughout the year . These events pushed our field to the limits , but our crew never stopped putting in whatever time and effort it took to continue to produce a product that surpassed expectations .
The toughest challenge was non-TCU-related events . Between May and August , we had 10 workdays that saw no type of usage , with five of those days coming between the conclusion of summer camps and the beginning of TCU ’ s individual practice . Although we knew we wouldn ’ t be hosting a regional , we had to plan based on the possibility of hosting a super regional , which meant holding on to our ryegrass late into May . While preparing to host a super regional , we also had to prepare for the summer camps , as there was one scheduled the same weekend as super regionals ( had TCU ended up not hosting ). To alleviate excess work , as well as cut costs , we repurposed old artificial turf that had been pulled out of our indoor football facility for the bullpen , mound and plate . This went down the week after the season ended for TCU . During the period in which we had three days to prepare for summer activities , we had to transition from rye to bermuda . We did this by uniraking , aerifying and scalping the ryegrass to . 5 ”. With so little time to transition , we then spent the next two and a half months playing catch up .
Over the course of the summer , TCU hosts community day camps which consist of 200-plus kids , age 6-14 , using the field from 9 a . m . to 3 p . m . each weekday . Starting Thursday , high school travel teams use the field for tournaments . This means that most mornings consisted of mowing , dragging and watering the dirt before we were forced off the field for the day . With this usage , we would use the occasional off day to unirake , aerify and edge the grass , and flood , nail , float and roll the dirt .
– Andrew Siegel , sports turf manager sportsfieldmanagementonline . com March 2023 | SportsField Management
31