Dolphin fans at the Orange Bowl bask in the afternoon sun while their counterparts in the North bundle up.

ORANGE BOWL PREPARES TURFFOR SEASON'S KICKOFF

On New Year's Day in much of thecountry, the ground is snow-coveredand trees are bare. A glance outside

reveals a cold, gray landscape.But color and warmth is quickly availa-

ble to anyone with a television set, simplyby turning the dial to the station with thebiggest traditional, New Year's Day sport-ing event-the Orange Bowl in Miami, FL.

'King Orange sits in the center of a dark,green football field. Brightly outfitted play-ers, cheerleaders and spectators (many inshort sleeves) show no signs of cold in thebright Miami sun. For a few hours, the snow-bound television viewer can imagine he toois sitting in the midst of the color and warmthof the Orange Bowl.

What the television viewer doesn't see,or even consider, is that Dale Sandin,grounds and turf manager of the OrangeBowl, and his crew have spent days get-14 sportsTURF

Profile of a soil sample shows the paint hasleached more than two inches into the soil.

ting the field ready. Like a make-up artistprepares an actor or actress for the camera,Sandin and his crew prepare the OrangeBowl. It's taken them years to discover howto make the turf and markings appear flaw-less, with considerably less control than thatavailable on a television or movie set.

Orange Bowl Stadium, just one of threestadiums under Sandin's care in Miami, wasbuilt more than 50 years ago specificallyto host a national contest between the twotop college football teams in the country.Each year, the winner of the Big Eight playsthe best team from the other conferencesbased upon the rankings. The event is direct-ed by a committee of distinguished Miamicitizens and a full-time year-round staff. Thecommittee rents the stadium from the cityfor the festivities.

The Orange Bowl has also served as thecontinued on page 16

George Toma, field consultant to the NFL, paints the blue star on the Dallas Cowboys' in-signia before the 1979 Super Bowl held at the Orange Bowl.

Orange Bowl has replaced nearly all the seats in the stadi-continued from page 14 um and spruced it up to look younger thanhome field of the Miami Dolphins since 1966. its 50 years.The team will move before the 1987 sea- Don't despair, says Sandin. The loss ofson to Dolphin Stadium, currently under con- the Dolphins will not leave the stadium va-struction between Miami and Fort Lauder- cant. The University of Miami plays its homedale. Joe Robbe, owner of the Dolphins cited games there. Each fall, Florida A&M hostsinsufficient parking, concession areas and one of its leading competitors in the Orangerestrooms as his reasons for building his Bowl Classic in the stadium. Many city highown stadium. In the past two years, Miami schools and leagues play their games at

the Bowl. In the fall, during one week therecan be two high school games, one Univer-sity of Miami game and a Dolphins game.

Tractor pulls and concerts also use theOrange Bowl's 75,000 seats during the year.Michael Jackson, Prince and Bruce Spring-steen and their fans have rocked the Bowlin the past two years. Every March, morethan 30,000 people flock to the Orange Bowlfor the Spanish Concert, in which Latin mu-sicians and artists play.

Despite all its use, the field has only beenresodded once since 1976, when artificialturf was ripped up and replaced with Tif-way bermudagrass planted in a specially-designed, subirrigated sand field. Thepredominantly sand rootzone gives theOrange Bowl turf the extra resilience it re-quires to withstand the rigors of football,soccer and special events.

The city management believes the OrangeBowl is the perfect site to launch interna-tional soccer in the U.S. Its location, its largehispanic population and its sports facilitiescan give the sport a boost it failed to getin other cities. Sandin has already startedto widen the field for soccer by removingbuilt-in structures and artificial turf in thebench areas. But, the field will probablynever host baseball.

It is ironic, since so many major leaguebaseball clubs have spring training facili-ties in Florida, that there isn't a single fran-chise based in the state. The Baltimore Ori-oles train each spring at Miami Stadium,

16 sportsTURF

also managed by Sandin. The Stadiumserves as the home of the Single A minorleague Miami Marlins.

With a staff of 11, Sandin manages theOrange Bowl, the Miami Stadium and Ma-rine Stadium. With that much turf to covet,he doesn't have time for mistakes. Asgrounds and turf manager, he reports to thedirector of public facilities.

"The first thing I had to learn ten yearsago, when I left Lake Arrowhead Golf Coursein Georgia to take over the Orange Bowl,"Sandin reflects, "was not to get disgustedwith the damage to the field after each game.Now, I expect damage and simply do mybest to repair it before the next game." Itwas a big change for Sandin, since his edu-cation at the Stockbridge School in Mas-sachusetts and experience as a golf coursesuperintendent in New England and Georgiawere based upon finer uses of natural turf.

Sandin has an edge over other stadiummanagers. He was hired to manage the newnatural field when it was installed in 1976.The Orange Bowl had worn out two artifi-cial surfaces in six years. The city was willingto give natural turf a fighting chance, so itinvested in a new concept called thePrescription Athletic Turf (PAT) system.

The entire field is like a bathtub filled withmedium-size sand. Only the top six to nineinches of sand are amended with peat mossand calcined clay. The primary advantageof sand, even when wet, is it will not com-pact like clay or silt, sealing up the surface

The turf in one end zone became a bright yellow banner for the Pittsburgh Steelers dur-ing the 1979 Super Bowl.and harming turf growth.

This system utilizes a closed drainage sys-tem attached to large pumps. The pumpscan suck water out of the sand rootzoneduring heavy rains or push water into therootzone for subirrigation during dry peri-ods or when the field is in use. The fieldalso has a conventional irrigation system.

"The PAT system is a tool with specialuses for a stadium grounds manager," says

Sandin. "I have to manage the Orange Bowlmuch differently than Miami Stadium." Dur-ing a heavy game schedule, he can replacesurface irrigation with subirrigation. For con-certs and tractor pulls, the field is coveredfor three days, but still, Sandin can getmoisture to the field if necessary."

"If I was going to do it again, I would nothave amended the top six inches with clay

continued on page 19

Circle 111 on Reader Service Card September 1986 17

Orange Bowlcontinued from page 17

and peat," confesses Sandin. It rained forfive days before the Dolphins playoff gamewith the Jets in 1982. Even with the pumpson the whole time, the amended surfacesoil did not drain well. "That game changedthe rules of the NFL ... now a tarp is requiredfor all fields," he says.

To open up the topsoil, Jerry Hutchinson,one of three sand-slitting contractors in thecountry, injected sand into a network of two-inch-wide trenches across the field. He al-so used an experimental device called aVertigroove, invented by Tom Mascaro ofMiami, which cuts and removes half-inch-wide channels of soil more than six inchesdeep. "The field is draining extremely wellnow," says a relieved Sandin.

The peculiarities of the PAT system wereonly part of a whole range of new ex-periences for Sandin as a stadium groundsmanager. He knew how to maintain ahealthy, dense stand of turf. What he didn'tknow when he arrived was how to dress turfup for the thousands of spectators and tel-evision viewers. If anything, he was con-cerned with the negative effect of paint onturf. Before Sandin arrived, the painting wasperformed by City of Miami painters. Hewanted more control.

The NFL requirements on field markingare clear as to location. NFL hash marksand sidelines are diferent than college. Tem-plates for teams and conference insignia

Dale Sandin examines the sand-filled slits cut into the field to restore drainage to the topsix inches of amended sand on the PAT field.

have to be obtained from visiting teams. Spe-cial event designs need to be made into tem-plates. When you have four different eventsin a stadium in one week considerable plan-ning is necessary.

But first, Sandin wanted to take a closerlook at the latex paints used for field marking.The paint used at the Orange Bowl was for-mulated by the lowest bidder. Often, paint

was applied much heavier than it neededto be. After a number of games, the paintcould be found two or three inches deepin the soil. Sandin wanted control.

The first thing he did was to developspecifications for the contents of the paint.In its simplest terms, paint is pigments sus-pended in a vehicle. The white paint for the

continued on page 20

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Truckster-mounted boom sprayer is used by the Orange Bowl crew to apply fertilizers,fungicides and green dye. The sprayer fits perfectly between the five yard lines.

Orange Bowlcontinued from page 19

Orange Bowl contains:Vinyl Acrylic Latex Paint Super WhitePigment 46.5%Titanium dioxide (type III) 50.00%Silica & silicates 33.33%Calcium Carbonate 16.67%Total Pigment 100.00%Vehicle 53.5%Vinyl Acrylic Resin 20.80%Glycol, Water & Add 29.20%Total Vehicle 100.00%

For each game, the lines are checked withstring stretched between points checkedregularly by a surveyor. A four-inch widetemplate is used for the sidelines and aneight-inch wide version for the goal lines.The templates are 15-ft. long and made outof aluminum. For NFL games the sidelinesare six feet wide. To get these exact, San-din uses the sideline templates on bothedges of the wide sideline and sprays inbetween these. A yellow photographers' lineis painted around the outside of the field.

Templates for the team insignia are moredifficult. The NFL logo alone is 30-ft. high.Sandin occasionally has to make templatesfor visiting teams. He uses an overheadprojector to enlarge an insignia onto plas-tic draped on the wall. Holes are punchedevery ten inches along the lines of the de-sign. The plastic is laid on the field, paintis sprayed through the holes and the paintersthen fill in the design.

"You have to be creative," says Sandin,"and apply only enough paint to just light-ly coat the leaves of the turf." Too muchpaint not only takes longer to dry, it saturatesthe soil below.

A typical week of painting at the OrangeBowl might be painting all the lines for ahigh school game on Tuesday night. Thefield is then touched up for another highschool game on Thursday afternoon. Fora University of Miami game on Saturday theentire field is repainted, as it is once morefor the Dolphins game on Sunday. "We usea lot less paint when repainting," says San-20 sportsTURF

din. "In fact, we use only half the amountof paint today than we did ten years ago,generally 60 gallons per Dolphins game. Wealso use more water in the paint mix."

To achieve a rich green color for the turf,both dyes and a regular program of over-seeding with perennial ryegrass. Sandincan't get these formulated locally so he buysVital awn from Mallinckrodt and Greenzitfrom W.A. Cleary. Dye is frequently need-ed in December and during playoff games.

Since much of the football season isplayed after the Tifway bermudagrass hasslowed its growth, overseeding is neces-sary. Last season 3,000 Ibs. of a blend ofperennial ryegrasses was used. Seedingis done almost weekly during the heaviestpart of the season. "Sometimes we broad-cast the seed on the field on a Monday andlet the players push the seed into the soilwith their cleats," describes Sandin. "Wealso pregerminate the seed and spread itwith calcined clay to get the seedlings go-ing in less than three days.

The first time during the season Sandinoverseeds, 800 pounds of seed is soakedin 55-gallon drums for 48-72 hours. Thewater is changed every 12 hours with freshwater. Finally, the seed is spread out to dryslightly and calcined clay is added to helpspread the seed over the field. This processis repeated with 250 pou nds of seed twoor three times during the season in wornareas of the field.

There is some evidence that dying thefield after it has been overseeded can helpwarm the soil to speed up the growth ofryegrass. "These are seedlings and somewill get torn up fairly easily," Sandin pointsout. "But a good portion does survive andestablishes a tough and attractive turfsurface."

The seedlings require fungicide treat-ments, but, such a dense turf has preventedany major weed problems. With the'-excep-tion of a few spot applications of MSMA forcrowsfoot, the field is clean. Sandin usesa 15-ft. boom sprayer for these treatments,using ,the five-ya.rd lines as guides.

The Orange Bowl's PAT system forcesSandin to supplement a regularly applied18-4-8 granular fertilizer with ammonniumsulphate. The granular fertilizer is 75% slowrelease nitrogen.

One of the greatest feats of agronomicsperformed every year by Sandin's crew isgetting the turf through four days of trac-tor pull. A week before the event, he spraysthe field with a curative rate of a broad spec-trum fungicide. If the tractor pull is Satur-day, the field is covered on Thursday af-ternoon with a one-quarter-inch thick ge-otextile fabric. Plywood is then laid over thefabric, followed by plastic sheeting and thenmountains of dirt on Friday morning. If theweather has been dry, the PAT system isused to subirrigate.

.:»,

Before painting the sideline, the alum inumtemplate is placed over a string stretched be-tween surveyor's marks.

As the last tractor pulls off the field onFriday night, front end loaders begin remov-ing the dirt. By noon on Sunday the natur-al grass is uncovered and growing onceagain. "We tried putting the dirt over strawthe first time and wrecked the field," he says."Now, we are very careful not to encouragelush conditions on the field by fertilizing oroverirrigating. And, the events are alwaysheld in the late winter when the bermudais virtually dormant and the football seasonis over. "We did playa World Cup Soccergame here after the last tractor pull with goodresults," said Sandin.

"When you get down to the bottom ofthings, that first glance of the field by a coachwhen he walks out of the locker room is whatcounts the most," Sandin advises. "If he seesone bad spot on the field, he'll start look-ing for others. If the field looks great he feelsmore professional and you areconsidereomore professional. That's what we are allhe.re tor." ~,_ _ _..> •••• ' _