FIELD OF THE YEAR SCHOOLS AND PARKS SPORTING GROUNDS
There are many factors why the Brownsburg Championship Cross Country Course is a great overall product that the school corporation is very proud of . The amount of projects we were able to do in house to prepare the course to host a state regional meet , maintaining a non-irrigated surface , and the amount of detail work we do for meets are just some of those reasons .
The number of projects we completed to help prepare the course to host a state regional meet were plentiful . First , we widened the course in spots because the number of runners at the meet . This required us to take 2-foot-tall native area grass and turn it into 1.75 ” running course grass . To do this , we mowed down the areas , overseeded them with tall fescue , topdressed with topsoil and broomed in the soil . Next , we had to remove three concrete pads and make those areas grass , because they were now where the course was going to run through . To do this , we removed the concrete and gravel under it , added topsoil and raked until it was level , and then placed sod on these areas . Both of these projects were a great success , and we wouldn ’ t have been able to host the regional meet without doing them .
Maintaining a non-irrigated surface definitely has its challenges . A lot of our work has to be scheduled around rainfall , because we need the rain to water-in our fertilizer applications . We also have to be careful with our mowing schedule to not mow the course when it is getting drought stressed . Our fall aerification also has to be timed after rainfall so the soil is wet enough that we get good depth . These are some of the hurdles we had to overcome while maintaining a non-irrigated athletic field .
The detailed work we do before every meet really helps our course stick out above the rest . We paint a logo at the finish line of every meet to promote the event we are hosting , paint the start line with a wood stencil we built to give us perfectly even and straight starting line boxes , and do a lot of line trimming and backpack blowing of the wooded path to give the course the clean presentation it requires for meets .
— Matt Dudley , sports turf field manager
sportsfieldmanagementonline . com May 2024 | SportsField Management
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