INDUSTRY EDUCATION
All photos on page 28 and top of page 29 courtesy of Thomas Dale High School
“ When they have ownership and they buy into what they’ re doing, that’ s huge,” he said.
Class sizes at Thomas Dale are capped at 20, while the average turf management class at South Forsyth has 13 students.
Turner, who had worked for the Atlanta Braves for five years and then was working in golf course management, was coaching at South Forsyth when approached to teach the turf management pathway.
Sheetz, on the other hand, came to the industry in a more circuitous fashion.
“ I have a degree in music and I taught elementary music for 19 years,” he said.“ In the middle of that process I needed to do something different. So I started a landscape business and I got really big into chemical application.”
Sheetz wanted to improve the quality of the sports fields on which his children played, so he joined the Virginia Sports Field Managers Association, built connections with Virginia Tech, and eventually added a landscape endorsement to his teaching license.
“ SFMA has been huge with partnerships, VSFMA has been great, and just the people in the industry have been arms wide open,” said Sheetz.“ We’ ve hosted two SFMA field days here at school and gotten our kids involved.”
According to Turner, industry support has been vital for the South Forsyth program as well. The Georgia SFMA and Georgia Golf Course Superintendents Association( GSCA) have been helpful, and Georgia GCSA Executive Director, Tim Busek, along with the First Green initiative, have worked to get turfgrass education into the classroom. Industry partners, such as Ewing Irrigation, have helped establish demos for the students.
For most high school turfgrass programs, budget is a major challenge, so industry partnerships such as these are crucial for growing the program and acquiring the proper equipment and resources.
Continued on page 30
28 SportsField Management | May 2025 sportsfieldmanagementonline. com