2011 Annual STMA Conference offered two Seminar on Wheels programs visiting Texas A&M, College Station community, University of Texas, and Round Rock community sports field management operations and facilities.

We've provided a series of annotated pictures that we believe highlights the profession and in many cases reflect best practices. The photo album shows many of the tools, equipment, and facilities that are used to support sports turf management activities. The university facilities typically had larger storage facilities with more equipment while some of the communities were being flexible with their recreational sports requirements where fields were multi-purpose.

There were several examples of homemade storage and washing stands and shelving to make the sports turf manager and staff's job easier and more efficient. For example there are several images of base cleaning and storage solutions. Marking whisker plugs were used by multiple facilities. Multiple infield rake configurations were observed and facilities stored them on racks and off the floor for quick and easy access.

This was my first opportunity to see the SportCamp synthetic turf cleaning and rejuvenation tool that was positively commented on by several users. A US service company currently uses this tool and has a video of equipment operation that can be downloaded.

http://www.stma.org/_Files/_Items/STMA-MR-TAB6-3749/Docs/2011%20Conf%20Brochure%20Reduced%20size.pdf

http://picasaweb.google.com/TruMarkAthletic/TurfMgrTools#

We would love to hear about your best practices and will be glad to post them for others to adopt.