Slugging Through Maintenance
A few tips on keeping softball fields playable and safe
By Lee Van Meeteren
Editor’s Note: In 2019, the Sports Turf Manager’s Association awarded its Softball Field of the Year award to Open Space Park in Sioux Center, Iowa. Parks Director, Lee Van Meeteren shares a few tips on how to keep fields tip-top, even at the busiest time of year.
As parks administrators—and parents—know all too well, children are plugged into electronic devices and tuned out of “live” action for too many hours in the day. The quintessential childhood experience of running out the back door and spending the day outside has largely disappeared, as have other critical developmental processes: group socialization, physical fitness, competition, and just plain play.
Sioux Center, Iowa is a small community of 8,000 people with big-city amenities. Like most small towns in rural America, money is frequently a topic of conversation when the park department is looking at doing any type of project or property maintenance. Here are a few tips on how to maintain fields at the highest level while keeping costs controlled.
Impress upon your crew the mindset of doing the little things often:
Photo: Courtesy of City of Sioux City, Iowa
Broom or blow dirt out of the lips daily. This task takes a few minutes, but it can save thousands in ripping out and sodding every couple years.
Throw grass seed by hand in wear spots as much as possible. This simple chore is very effective when in season because the players can push the grass seed into place with their cleats and frequently introducing new grass seed helps maintain a safe and good-looking field.
Fix home plate batter’s boxes and the pitching area daily. This not only helps with safety, but turns an hours-long project before a game into a 10-minute job.
There are many jobs at each field that anyone can say, “If we only had time,” or, “It’s too expensive.” My reply to that is doing the little things often prevents them from becoming big, expensive projects and those “chores” of maintaining a field become less time consuming. Although our fields aren’t perfect, we keep trying. The biggest priority in a well-manicured field is player safety and then playability is second; appearance is last.
Lee Van Meeteren is the Parks Director for the city of Sioux Center, Iowa. Reach him at leevm@siouxcenter.org.