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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2006 04 10 Informational Item 504 Sports Field Magazine COMMISSION AGENDA ITEM 504 Consent Informational X Public Hearing Regular April 10, 2006 Regular Meeting Mgr. / Dept. Authorization REQUEST: The Parks and Recreation Department is informing the City Commission that Winter Springs Parks and Recreation is highlighted in the April 2006 Sports Field Management Publication. PURPOSE: The purpose of this item is to inform the City Commission about this recognition. CONSIDERATIONS: . In February 2006 Sports Field Management contacted Parks and Recreation and requested to do an article with pictures. . Staff was interviewed and submitted photos. . The Sports Turf Management Publication is distributed to over 23,000 individuals and business across North America. FUNDING: N/A. RECOMMENDA TIONS: N/A. IMPLEMENTATION SCHEDULE: N/A. A TT ACHMENTS: Actual Magazine. COMMISSION ACTION: 1Questions Chuck Pula Parks and Recreation Director, Winter Springs, Fla. 1 What is your current job title, what are your responsibilities in this position, and what percentage of your time involves sports field management? I am the Parks and Recreation Director for the City of Winter Springs. Fla. Winter Springs is a rapidly growing young family community near Orlando with a current population of 33.321 that will likely grow to 40 or 45,000. There is a lot of new con- struction in condos and town homes with little green space. I administer the Parks and Recreation Department. That includes the Parks Division which maintains all public parks and sports fields; the Athletics Division. which handles all the youth and adult league tournament play and field rentals; the Programs and Special Events Division. which handles all the programs. classes. special events and building rentals; the Senior Division. which runs programs and activities at the Senior ("Center; and the Concession Division. which operates two concession buildings. I also do master planning. both long and short-range. I administer impact fees of $1 ,200 per new apartment. condo or home. These funds come directly to our department for improvments and equip- ment for field (are that we can tie directly to growth_ I also apply for and administer state and federal grants. to date bringing in $2.5 million for Parks and Recreation projects. We have 12 public parks Covering 265 acres. We have 15 picnic pavilions and play- grounds with varying other amenities. Athletic fields are located at five of our park sites. The largest. Central Winds Park. encompasses 103.5 acres. It's the site of our STMA Award Winning Sports Complex with two baseball, two softball and four soccer game fields. all lighted. Also within the park is a huge passive picnic area with trees and a natural amphitheater sloping toward Lake Jessup. My office. and the Parks, Athletics and Recreation Division offices are located on the top door of the two-story concessions building at the center of the baseball/softball field quad. The view of the area is awesome. We added a 27-acre expansion at Central Winds Park in the spring of 2005 with two baseball fields. two soccer 'fields and two football,soccer and lacrosse fields (all prac- tice fields). Trotwood Park is a 4()-acre community park with three baseball/softball fields and four soccer/football practice fields. Sunshine Park has three baseball/softball practice fields. It's the site of our senior cen- ter and our civic center. Torcaso Park has one football/soccer practice field. With the aid of a community development block grant we addl't! asplash playground" there with underground jets shooting out water at different heights in varying Cycles. It was the first in our area and has become very popular. Our other parks offer a wide variety of facililies. For example. at Moss Park we have two basketball courts. picnic pavilions and two playgrounds. We also have the Bear Creek Nature Trail Facility. We're adding a new therapy pool and building expansion to our senior center site. Our parks also host major community events. such as the Holiday Festival the weekend before Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July cele- bration. which attracts 30.000 people to Central Winds Park. We are always looking for ways to improve all the parks. Our largest programs are sports programs. and citizens want high-quality. well-maintained game and practice fields. I devote about 25 percent of my time to sports field management because of my great interest in the turfgrass. its maintenance. quality and appearance. 2 What attracted you most to your current career? I was attracted by the diversity of the parks and recreation field. You have the opportunity to affect people in so many dif ferent ways through activities, events and even the open spaces. There are unlimited opportunities to grow and advance profes. sionally through formal education and the personal search for knowledge through reading. conferences. networking, vendors. suppliers and university research personnel. If you aren't keeping up with the technical advancements and the growing body of knowledge. you're just staying the same, and I'm not in the business of doing that, 3 Where and what was your first job in the industry? My lirst turf-related experience was build. ing a Bahia grass football field in Fort Pierce, Fla. in 1972. As program director, I worked with the executive director to fund, develop and build a field for the Indian River and YMCA Youth Football Program. I did the research to properly design. construct and maintain the field, and coordinated the process to beg and borrow the funds, equipment and materials we needed. I worked hands-on through site preparation, irrigation design and installation. surface preparation. sprigging. grow.in and devel- oping and carrying out the maintenance program. I took pride in gathering the infor- mation and carrying through to make sure it was done right. It was truly learning on the job, and I fell in love with turf. 4 What are the soil profiles of your fields? Our fields are all native soil. with the majority of them a sandy loam. A few fields have a muckier base profile primarily because of materials filled into those spots during construction. Water infiltrates and percolates quickly on the sandy loam fields, so surface drainage created through sloping has been adiquate to prevent rainouts in all but the most extreme situations. (Winter Springs has been a target of several recent hurricanes and tropical storms.) We installed in-ground drainage to supplement the surface drainage on one of the soccer fields at CentraI Winds that has the heavier soil profile. 5 What types of turf do you have on your fields? We have become a showcase for the use of Seashore Paspalum on sports fields. We like being a front-runner. We do our homework. and when we're convinced a new product or process looks good and warrants a try. we'll go with it. We installed Sealsle I Paspalum at the football/soccer field at Torcaso Park four years ago. The heavy use and repetition of the combined sports would give us a good test. After a full season. its performance was every- thing we had anticipated and more. We espe- cially liked how fast it filled in wear areas. We decided on the lower growing variety with a denser canopy. Sea Dwarf Paspalum for the 27 acres of the Central Winds Park Expansion. We sprigged and sodded it on the athletic fields and throughout the park, including the parking lot. That 101 was filled with cars throughoul the summer. The turf bounced back beautifull)' when traffic slowed after school started. The sprigged fields looked great and were played on after only five months grow in. In September and October of 2005. we put down Aloha Paspalum in all the open spaces at Moss Park. It can be mowed at a higher height than Sea Dwarf and so pro- duces less thatch. It has a large leaf blade and is not as tight as the SeaDwarf. It looks like a maintained Bermuda grass at three- quarter inch or so and holds up well. A few weeks ago we hit our lowest tem- perature of the year. 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Parks Superintendent Alan Greene shot Chuck Pula cintinued from page 23 some photos of the Paspllum fields covered with frost. He took another group of shots seven days later. These photos, along with the supporting data, will become part of our documentation on the performance of the varrious cultivars. We share our data with other sports field managers, University research personnel and our suppliers. In January, Yahuda A. Sabah, a turf grass consultant from Israel, toured our fields as part of his research on Polspalum performance on athletic fields here. He was especially interested in our use of fine granular salt, rock salt and heated salt water for weed control. We apply it directly on the Polspalum for weed control, and it kills the weeds without creating problems on the turf. We are also doing experimenta- tion and documentation for weed control to take out ryegrass in Paspalum. We have 419 Bermudagrass on the game fields at Central Winds Park. We plan to convert the Sunshine Park and Trotwood Park Fields to one of the Paspalum varieties instead of the Bahia. We have some St. Augustine at our senior center facility and primarily Bahia at our other parks. 6 How do you layout the typical annual field maintenance program? We pull soil samples.at least twice a year and establish a basic field maintenance schedule. Tina Kimball, our turf manager (crew leader), observes the fields every day. Our maintenance program is adjusted as needed based on the results of the soil sample tests and Tina's continual observa- tion of field performance. We apply a granular fertilizer every eight weeks at approximately a I to I ratio of Nitrogen (N) and Potassium (K), putting down 6.5 pounds of Nand 6 pounds of K per 1,000 square feet per year. We apply a pre- emergence and fertilizer combination, 15-5-15 with 67 percent Ronstar, twice a year. Post. emergence control is applied as needed following standard IPM procedures. We use a form of salt for post -emergence weed control on the Polspalum fields. We aerate just prior to applying granular mole cricket control Precise (granular Acephate) in May or June. We monitor conditions and treat for fire ants and other insect problems as needed following standard IPM procedures. We core actify and topdress twice a year. The Bermuda grass fields are overseeded with perennial ryegrass at the rate of 300 pounds per acre. We reserch cultivars of ryegrass, selecting a threeway blend that best matches our field needs. This past year we used the PHD perennial ryegrass blend from Harrell's. The transition back to Bermuda grass is fair- Iy simple here. We stop the irrigation and let the heat take out the ryegrass. One of the highest factors in preservation of field quality is our schedule downtime. Our fields are taken out for play the week before Thanksgiving and remain closed until the end of January. We complete our tall maintenance procedures and allow them to grow and recu. perate for 10 wceks. We also have a summer downtime for about five weeks in June and July. Once open for play, the fields will be used almost continually. Our open park space is accessible to the public during the downtime, but not the game fields. 7 What's the most important piece of equipment or product in your program? The most important component here is our staff. Parks Superintendent Alan Greene, Turf Manager Tina Kimball and Irrigation technician Steve Richart all do a terrific job. Also all of the seven other main- tenance staff members are excellent. They're dedicated to what they do and arc continu- ally learning and looking for ways to make our parks and our fields the best they can be for the public. I am fortunate to have them and tell them so every chance I get. On the equipment side, I would say our John Deere 3235 B reel mower is the most important. It covers a lot of ground quickly with a quality cut. We are now mowing over 50 acres of sports fields between the Bermuda and the Paspalum. It took us 10 the next level with the look of Ihe fields and the way they play. Short, even turf makes the balls roll fast and true. 8 What are the biggest challenges on your fields, and how do you approach those challenges? Irrigation is our biggest challenge becallse we strive for top quality fields. The light lime frame we have for irrigation lim- its the amount of water we can apply 10 keep the grass in good shape. Our heat and humidity pull moisture from the turf. and Our summer rains are sporatic. There's also more pressure from the water management agencies to use less water due to the popu- lation growth throughout Florida. We are able to pump most of our water from Lake Jessup, and we use some reclaimed water. We're also planning to draw supplemental water from an artesian well that we acquired with our expansion property. We maintain 116 irrigation zones. Of those, 53 zones put out .40 of an inch per hour; 50 put out .93 of an inch per hour and 13 zones put out .45 of an inch per hour. We have eight hours of run time per day, so it's difficult to apply enough water to replace what's lost according to the evapo transpiration (ET) rates. The summer shal- low irrigation also makes it harder to get deep root growth and does allow some weed infiltration. 9 How do you communicate and/or handle issues with your players/coaches/the public? We have six formally executed partner- ship agreements with the youth leagues that stipulate what is provided, who is responsi- ble for what and how we communicate to solve problems. As part of those agree- ments, we promote the facilities, and they promote the programs. These agreements also generate approximately $10,000 per league to the city. We are fortunate to have Chris Caldwell as our recreation supervisor/sports. Chris works directly with the leagues. He attends their board meetings. works with their sched- ulers and addresses any problems that come up with either party. The agreements helped us establish the proper chain of command. The leagues take any problems to the league supervisor and representative, who, in turn, take them to Chris. Nearly 99 percent of the issues are resolved before they get to me. We both want sucessful programs and top quality fields and realize we need to work together to achieve that. A good example is an issue we brought to the City Commission last month. The fields at our new expansion property had been built for practice only. But the Babe Ruth League had grown by 10 teams. After discussion, we petitioned the City Commission to allow the younger age group to use the expansion fields for games. The parks and Recreation Department creat- ed the resolution, and the league representa- tives appeared to confirm the need and express their support of the resolution. The City Commission complied by issuing a res- olution that allows Ieague use of two of the four practice fields for games each Saturday during the spring and fall seasons. Good data helps a lot. We were able to report thaI 91 percent of the Babe Ruth league participants were Winter Springs residents. We are running at 88 percent Winter Springs residents in our football Ieague programs and 80 percent in our soc- cer. Data is so important for everything from budgeting field maintenance costs to staffing to equipment needs, etc. 1 0 How do you see the sports field management profession changing in the future? I believe the key to success now and in the future focuses on adjustability. It will become even more important to keep up- to-date with the influx of new products and technology. I am blessed to work at Winter Springs. We are a positive growth city. Our residents want nice sports facilities and are willing to pay for them. We can obtain grants and have money to match those grants. In other areas, where populations and revenues are down and costs are going up. Different adjustments need to be made. We all have to be attuned to changing demographics and changes in funding or resource availability, such as water shortages. We must be willing and able to adjust to meet those needs. We will need to be even more creative (maybe building a base of volunteers or working with different turf types or using different maintenance techniques. The key will be adjusting to the current and evolving situations, whatever they might be, and doing the best that can be done with what we have. A HELPING HAND FOR YOUR GROWING NEEDS