INDUSTRY RESOURCES made mistakes, and the field was unplayable for years.
“ That’ s when I realized someone needs to teach people how to do this, and how to do it right the first time,” said Puhalla.“ I drew 10 hand-sketched diagrams, added some basic text, and that became the seed of the book.”
In 1995, while in Florida to accept his STMA Schools and Parks Baseball Field of the Year award, Puhalla saw a trade show booth for Mississippi State University( MSU) Golf and Sports Turf Management. After the conference, Puhalla sent his 10-page booklet to MSU. As a result, Krans called Puhalla and invited him to speak to MSU students about the sports turf industry. Krans and Puhalla were soon discussing the possibility of collaborating on a book, and reached out to Goatley to gauge his interest in joining them.
“ Sports field management was a small part of the industry,” said Krans.“ It hadn’ t really caught on yet. We were interested in establishing programs and educating young men and women in the industry. But up to that point we were mainly training people to be golf course agronomists or superintendents.”
According to Krans, Puhalla’ s drawings were unlike anything he and Goatley had seen before. They realized there was an opportunity to create something that could be an educational resource for practitioners and students alike.
“ From that point, we just kind of plowed our way through with Jim’ s drawings,” said Krans.“ Jim was a design / build person, and that was a great advantage for us because we had someone to keep us on track, and show us what he’ s doing and what he’ s done. The three of us came up with what you see today, and we’ ve been trying to make it better with time. We’ re at the fourth edition because everything changes.”
According to Goatley, development of the book also led to the development of a network of people in the sports field management industry.
Layout of a typical 195 ft( 65 yd) oval cricket field.
“ We were probably 90 % golf, 5 % sports field and 5 % lawn care at that time,” said Goatley.“ But we found out that sports field managers were as passionate as any other segment of the industry in terms of what they were doing. We had a lot of advice coming from people who were actually doing sports field management.” sportsfieldmanagementonline. com May 2026 | SportsField Management
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