Beating a tough tournament deadline
19 Aug, 2008 By: Ron Hall Athletic Turf News
Don't try this at home.
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That might be the advice that longtime turfgrass expert Eugene Mayer might offer to anyone considering trying to establish a Kentucky bluegrass soccer field from seed on a sand base for a mid-summer international competition. And we're not talking just any youth soccer field. We're referring to a field scheduled for a prestigious international youth soccer tournament just nine months after seeding.
Mayer realized it was risky business. "I was a little bit nervous," he admits.
But with Mother Nature helping, he and the company he was working for Athletic Alliance, based in Marysville, OH, pulled it off successfully.
The event was the World Youth Tournament (WYT) hosted by the Premier Soccer Academies (PSA), a one-of-a-kind youth training facility located in Lorain, OH. The 2-year-old PSA is the dream project of international soccer goalkeeper Brad Friedel.
Friedel a native of nearby Bay Village, OH, played 82 games for the U.S. national team from 1992-2005, including representing his country in three FIFA World Cups tournaments. He continues to play at the highest level. In July he signed to play for Aston Villa of the English Premier League.
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The PSA offers year-round scholarships, recruits and trains soccer players aged 12-17 from around the globe. They are selected on the basis of skill level and not by their parents' ability to pay. It's the goal of the PSA to train the next generation of professional players. Clean and modern in every respect, the PSA campus and facilities proved to be the ideal location for this type of event, which involved teams from the United States, South America and Europe, eight in total.
And, in spite of two new, full-sized synthetic turf soccer fields installed at the PSA by Dan Pritt and his team at Athletic Alliance, Friedel wanted the tournament to be played on real turfgrass.
The only problem was that when he made that decision the PSA didn't have a tournament-quality turfgrass playing field.
That's when Pritt, whose company designed and installed much of the sports-related facilities at the PSA, sought Mayer's help. Formerly with The Scotts Company, Mayer has been consulting on and implementing maintenance programs for turfgrass sports fields for more than 30 years.
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The job turned out to be as big a challenge as Mayer and Pritt could have asked for. And then some.
For starters, because of construction delays, they couldn't seed the field until the second week in October, more than a month past the ideal seeding time for the site, which is located in northern Ohio just a few miles south of Lake Erie.
"I would never recommend that to anybody," admits Mayer.
In fact, Mayer worked into the darkness on that particular October evening as he crisscrossed a blend of three varieties of Kentucky bluegrass into the growing medium, a mixture of 85% sand, 10% compost and 5% soil. After that he went over the field with a double shot of starter fertilizer, a high rate of potassium and a minor elements package.
Then he crossed his fingers hoping for a couple of weeks of warm weather. He realizes he was lucky this time.
"Fortunately the temperatures stayed relatively nice until about the second week in November and we got germination of anywhere from a quarter to a half inch," he recalls.
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The field got to rest over the winter before Mayer returned to look at it again on April 26. Over the next 30 days he ordered three rounds of nitrogen fertilizer and an application of potash. The grass responded. Even so the field was far from tournament ready.
June 1 was the deadline that he, Pritt and Friedal had set to review the field's progress and make a final decision on whether it would be ready for the 8-day World Youth Tournament scheduled to start Aug. 10.
"If it didn't look like it was going to be ready within the next eight weeks we had to come up with a different plan," says Mayer, admitting that none of them sounded appealing. Options included overseeding the Kentucky bluegrass with ryegrass, installing sod over the field or, the most drastic measure, ripping out the grass and laying sod in time for the tournament.
"We had fourth option and it was to keep pushing the grass with fertilizer and try to grow it in," he explains. "I wasn't entirely confident that we could make it happen but we decided to keep going."
Over the next couple of months both Mayer and Pritt made the 3-hour drive several times from their Marysville, OH, base to the PSA campus to work on the 230-ft. by 360-ft. field and prepare surrounding the field for the tournament.
While Mayer concentrated on the turfgrass, Pritt and his team worked on the area surrounding the field, including installing seating for 1,300 people and constructing a connector bridge. That work started just 14 days prior to the tournament due to a delay in the permitting process. Pritt's Athletic Alliance crew finished the night before tournament play began.
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As for the turfgrass field, Mayer had to count on some help from Mother Nature. And he got it.
Thanks in large part to cooler-than-normal mid-summer temperatures (favorable for root development for Kentucky bluegrass) and regular irrigation by the field's new underground irrigation system, the bluegrass filled in nicely and provided excellent playing conditions for the tournament.
"Actually, I think they could have played on it August 1, so we had 10 days to spare," says Mayer, who made one final trip to the site to watch the tournament in action on the field.
The field, which had already hosted eight or nine games the previous four days, was holding up nicely, no divots and the footing was excellent, reported the young players.
Again, Mother Nature helped out. Blue skies and cooler-than-normal temperatures greeted play just about every day of the tournament.
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Pritt says work will continue on the PSA facility, which will be getting lights for night play and additional seating for 4,000 prior to next year's World Youth Tournament.
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