Believe it or not, the spring season begins March 24 aka NEXT WEEK! Our grounds crew is hard at work preparing for the upcoming season!

WAKE UP!

One of the first things that need to be done is to get the fields to ‘wake up’ from their winter slumber. Like we said last turf talk, our crew uses things like grow covers, lights, and paint to help get the grass to wake up, but Mother Nature herself has to help to get the grass to fully come awake. Sunshine and warmer air temperatures have the most significant impact on increasing the soil temperature to allow the grass to begin growing again. Unfortunately, even though we’ve had a warmer start to the year, the temperatures aren’t quite what is needed to get the grass to fully wake up, but we are hoping for a warm stretch soon!

Once the soil temperature does come up, the mowing height will be lowered to stimulate growth and allow for the spread of our first application of organic fertilizer to give the plants the nutrients they are lacking from the winter. Until the warmth comes, our crew will continue to use grow covers, grow lights, and paint throughout the spring to help combat the cooler temperatures.

EQUIPMENT

Prepping for the spring includes getting all the packed-up equipment out and ready for use! The grounds crew starts by restringing all the nets for the 80+ KwikGoal soccer goals that we have throughout the Plex. Once they get those done, we use our Turf Tank painting robots to paint the fields. These robots help speed up the paint time in the blink of an eye! Once the fields are painted, the trash cans and benches are brought back out to the fields, goals are set and the fields are ready to go!

FIELD CONFIGURATIONS

Soccer plays their games on different-sized fields depending on the age grouping. In 1 weekend our grounds crew will have 7 different field configurations to prepare. The different sizes are:

• Youth Clinics
• 4v4
• 7v7
• 9v9 with 6×18 goals
• 9v9 with 7×21 goals
• 9v9 with 8×24 goals
• 11v11 (full field)

Some fields might have multiple configurations on them in order to maximize field space while also trying to spread out fields to reduce crowding issues in the parking lots. We do this to the best of our ability as we often have many activities at the Plex at once!

Our grounds crew is doing everything they can to help get ready for the season next week! If you see them around, be sure to thank them for their hard work. Tune in on March 30 for another Turf Talk!