2014 West Coast Sportsfield Training Day Report

By Hugh Norris

The second annual West Coast Sportsfield Training Day, hosted by the City of Surrey and the Western Canada Turfgrass Association, was held at Cloverdale Athletic Park on Wednesday, August 20th.  This year’s event attempted to shift gears (literally) after last year’s inaugural event in Langley, as it was smaller in scope and size, but not on energy or enthusiasm. 

And the weather was almost perfect, with just enough cloud cover to keep everyone comfortable.

For this year, the organizing committee’s goal was to create a relaxing but stimulating day for the 80 delegates who attended from BC’s lower mainland and Vancouver Island.  The morning session included a presentation by Mike Hebrard of Athletic Field Design out of Portland, Oregon.  His power point presentation and subsequent field demonstrations focused on sportsfield logo painting and ball diamond infield preparation.  For many delegates attending, working with stencils and logo painting are not something that is practiced to the same degree north of the 49th parallel.

Mike’s hands on demonstration included creating a stencil from scratch out of a 10 x 12’ vinyl tarp.  Attendees were encouraged to help out with creating and then filling in the “Softball BC” logo with paint supplied by Tomko Sports.  The end result was a very impressive professional looking logo, created from simple materials and a bit of high school geometry.  Painted logos, when strategically situated on a sportsfield or ball diamond, create an attractive and professional looking finish when hosting Provincial or National caliber tournaments.

The finished product, Softball BC logo. Image credit Jerry Rousseau

Left - Mike Hebrard, Athletic Field Design and right - Hugh Norris, City of Surrey, inspect the field painting logo template. Image credit Jerry Rousseau

 The afternoon session was dubbed the “Landscape Midway and Rodeo” This session was modeled after a much more competitive model that exists in some areas in the US.  Cities, municipalities and towns compete in landscape related tasks and equipment operation against each other.  Competitions in some states actually produce a state champion.  However, in true Canadian spirit, the afternoon activities in Surrey were designed to be mostly fun with prizes to stimulate a competitive and engaging atmosphere.  Approximately 30 prizes were awarded that were generously supplied by the attending vendors, who all stepped up to the plate to host a variety of tasks from field painting blindfolded, to skill testing landscape product application quizzes, to a timed irrigation scheduling and product knowledge race.

Double winner! UBC's Krista Hewlett shows off her prize(s) from the skill competition. Image credit Hugh Norris

 The City of Surrey would like to thank the following supporters and vendors for participating in this year’s event:   WCTA Mentoring & Research, Irrigation Industry Association of B.C., Corix Water Products, Toro Irrigation, Premier Pacific Seeds, Brett Young, Tomko Sports Systems Inc., Direct Solutions, TDS West, Terra Equipment, Terralink Horticulture, Van-Kel Irrigation, Western Turf Farms Ltd., Veratec, Sybertech Waste Reduction, Westera Equipment LP and Prairie Coast Equipment.

Where there's smoke there's Jed McGeachie and the Corix BBQ wagon. Special thanks to the Corix team for providing lunch once again this year! Image credit Jerry Rousseau

“At the end of the day, I believe we accomplished our goal of providing a low-cost, unique and stimulating atmosphere for Sportsturf professionals” said Hugh Norris.  “Hopefully, another BC city will carry the torch and continue with the 3rd. annual event in 2015.  Lastly, I want to thank the City of Surrey and especially the Surrey Parks, Athletic Field Operations staff for rallying behind the committee’s vision to host this style of event.”