“I love to work outside and love to golf, so it seemed to be the perfect career,” said Justin Carroll, turfgrass management freshman, who has completed an internship in turfgrass management at one golf course as well as having worked on two others.

Carroll is one of the about 150 students involved in one of the four graduate and undergraduate turfgrass programs offered at MSU through the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences.

In addition to studying turfgrass management in the classroom, students also have the opportunity to get some hands-on experience.

At MSU’s Robert W. Hancock Turfgrass Research Center, 4444 Farm Lane, researchers and students work on projects that will help improve the athletic fields around campus.

There are 56 acres of land at the facilities divided up into three types of fields. Students and researchers work together performing seeding and irrigation tests on several golf greens, home lawn and athletic field simulations.

Farm Manager Mark Collins oversees the immense facility and is on hand for the research done on the various fields around the center.

Workers are currently doing research on different drainage systems for athletic fields in which they put drain tiles down in different areas of the field to see how fast they can move water off of it.

They also work on fertility plots, where they compare different grass surfaces to see which will look better on an athletic field.

The work at the Hancock Turfgrass Research Center also has produced fields on local, national and international levels. James Crum, a professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, and a team of researchers were recently involved in building a portable soccer field for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

When MSU decided to build a natural grass field for the 2002 football season, the turfgrass researchers jumped at the opportunity. They designed the field and the root-zone material that the turfgrass actually grows in.

“The field was actually built in an on-site parking lot in 2001, grew and matured over the summer and was played on in the fall of 2002,” Crum said.

“It’s a modular system and it was cutting-edge technology at the time. It was a university project that involved everyone,” said Amy Fouty, athletic turfgrass manager for MSU.

Maintaining the turfgrass is nearly a year-long job for Fouty and her crew. Work typically starts in the spring as soon as spring football practice ends. The field is somewhat worn by then from the fall season and the spring practice season.

“We do a lot of seeding. It’s kind of like working on a big golf course green. It takes the entire summer to whip it back into shape. Seeding, top-dressing, airifying. It’s all dependent on the weather,” Fouty said.

These many processes bring the field back to life and prepare it for the fall season. Slit seeding cuts grooves into the field and drops seed into it.

The airifying process punches holes and brings soil up to the surface. Top-dressing spreads out mix of root zone that is in the turfgrass.

“The field was designed for the game of football,” said Crum. “It has the correct kind of soil; it has the correct kind of grass, so that it can withstand the kind of play that it’s going to receive.”

Turf aspirations

Students in the program said they chose to go into turfgrass management because of a love of sports and the outdoors.

“I chose my major because I love to golf, and I figured if I am gonna go to school for at least four more years I wanted to do something that I would enjoy,” said Tyler Cooper, a crop and soil sciences sophomore. “I really want to get into golf course design and or be a greenskeeper at a major golf course.”

The four-pronged program allows students to focus their studies in general turfgrass management and sports and commercial turf management.

“We pride ourselves on being able to have an educational program for almost anybody interested in studying turfgrass management,” Crum said.

Students who have gotten internships in turfgrass management say that the things they learned here helped them immensely.

“The best part of the experiences are using what we have learned in the classroom and applying them to real-life situations which arise when being a turf manager,” said Jared Knoodle, a crop and soil sciences senior who interned for the San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park this summer.

Beyond MSU

The turfgrass management program has some notable alumni overseeing ground maintenance at famous venues.

Heather Nabozny, a 1993 MSU graduate, works an average of about 70 hours a week as director of grounds at Comerica Park.

She also holds the distinction of being the first-ever female head groundskeeper of a major league field.

She said her training in the MSU turfgrass program equipped her with skills she needed in the real world.

“It gives you a solid basis for understanding the fundamentals of how turf likes to grow,” Nabozny said. “I was impressed with the program. The professors took the time to explain everything, and I was a student who didn’t ask a lot of questions.”

Through the turfgrass program, she got to work on many of the fields throughout campus including Spartan Stadium, Kobs Field near Jenison Field House and the many intramural fields. When she graduated, she got a job working at the Toronto Blue Jays’ winter facility in Dunedin, Fla.

However, Nabozny wanted to move back to Michigan and became head groundskeeper for the West Michigan Whitecaps near Grand Rapids. In 1999, she was named director of grounds at Comerica Park.

“Working at MSU and working at Comerica Park aren’t all that different