Md. SoccerPlex’s Minnick elated by “Field of the Year” honor

Jerad Minnick, the turf manager at the Maryland SoccerPlex, has hailed the Sports Turf Managers Association’s decision to honor his facility with its Field of the Year award in the Schools and Parks category for soccer this week, noting the welcome timing of the accolade for a staff which just completed a long and difficult season.

“I am especially excited for our maintenance staff – 2011 has not been a kind year for maintaining fields,” Minnick told Potomac Soccer Wire via email this week. “We experienced our highest average temperature ever for the month of July, progressed to Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee bringing one of the wettest periods ever through August and September, and finished with the coolest average temperature for October ever.”

As many teams across the Mid-Atlantic can attest, a large chunk of this fall’s playing season was plagued by extremely wet weather and the resulting rash of rainouts and reschedules tested the skills and resolve of Minnick and his crew of four full-time and four seasonal groundskeepers.

“Our maintenance staff still was able to maintain a high level of focus and effort even when it seemed Mother Nature was never going to give us a break,” he said. “So I am most excited for them to receive some very deserved recognition for their efforts.”

While many area soccer players, coaches and parents were left mightily frustrated by the year’s many rainouts, it’s clear that only the hard work of men and women like Minnick kept the situation from being even worse.

“We’ve tried pretty much everything to figure out how to keep fields open,” said the SoccerPlex’s field guru. “And even though we were closed five days, we did have good success. Even after a tropical storm with 11.5 inches of rain, we were open 36 hours later. That’s really a testament to the dedication of my guys.

“The goal of the facility is to really eliminate rainouts.”

The SMTA award was based on more than just quality of turf. The type and number of events hosted by facilities was taken into account, as well as other criteria like “innovative solutions employed, effective use of budget and the development and implementation of a comprehensive, sound agronomic program,” in the words of the turf industry organization itself.

Minnick also expressed a desire to share the award with another group of stakeholders who he thinks deserve gratitude and respect: the players themselves.

“Our patrons had to endure the ups and downs of the weather this year also,” he wrote. “From rainouts to frost delays, days to get out and just play soccer with nothing else to worry about seemed limited.

“We spend every day trying to create innovative and cutting-edge maintenance techniques in order to sustain more traffic on fields while maintaining them at a higher quality and reducing our weather cancellations. With this award, I feel like our patrons receive some credit for getting to be a part of progress in the field management industry, too.”