Few players earned any awards at Davis Wade Stadium at Scott Field this year, but the field itself managed to attain the highest prize possible.
Two weeks ago, the Sports Turf Managers’ Association named Scott Field the Collegiate Football Field of the Year for 2004.
Bart Prather, Mississippi State’s Athletic Field Supervisor, had to make sure his crew had everything in order when competing for the award.
“Safety is our big thing,” assistant sports turf manager Jason Smith said. “That’s the main thing (the STMA) looks at.”
Besides ensuring that the field is safely playable, Smith said the department sent in pictures showing the design of the field, a maintenance schedule and a record of how often the field was used for games, camps and practices.
“Also, if something happened, they want to know how you fixed it,” he said. “One year, somebody accidentally put the (goal line) ‘G’ on the five yard line, so they went in there and put a dog paw over it.”
Incidentally, EA Sports interpreted the cover-up as an intentional design and began including the paw print on its NCAA Football games in 2001.
Scott Field must be re-painted before each home game, and Smith said he and his crew can paint the field in eight hours and prefer to split the work into two days. For the Egg Bowl, the crew used 300 gallons of paint-150 white and 150 maroon.
Mark Simpson, who’s helped prepare the school’s athletic fields since the fall of 2000, says the weather can increase the amount of paint needed.
“My second year here, we were playing Memphis, and we ended up painting the field three or four times because every time we painted, it ended up raining,” Simpson said. “Finally, the last time we painted, we had to paint with aerosol cans instead of actual water-based paint.”
The grass, of course, factored greatly into consideration for the award. Rather than painting the grass to make it look greener like some schools, field maintainers keep the grass healthy.
“Earlier in the week, we’ll go in there and spray a foliar application of fertilizer,” Smith said. “It’s got iron in it, and it enhances the green that much more.”
Prather’s crew consists of Smith, Simpson and three MSU students studying turf management. David Presley, an agronomy major, says the experience will give him other opportunities.
“I really do think it’s an advantage to be able to sit down in an interview and say I was there, and I made that field what it is,” Presley said. He also credited Dr. James Goatley Jr., a Plant and Soil Sciences professor, with much of the program’s success.
“Dr. Goatley, I think, is the main reason the turf program runs as smoothly as it does,” Presley said. “He basically looks over all the students. He’s the guy who opens those doors for you.”