After finishing the first year
of the Turf program here at Olds, I was excited to go back to work for the
season. The job had changed from a
summer job to pay for post-secondary to a career choice; a career I found
myself excited to begin. As the summer
came to an end and the second year started, I found I had some pretty exciting
expectations for the year. I was eager
to take my knowledge and experience to a whole new level. I was also excited to be involved with the
Turf Club executive board, a strong team with each individual bringing their
own strengths. I quickly jumped at the chance when asked and I’m glad I did.
Being involved with the Turf Club allowed me numerous opportunities to network
and I can’t complain that it padded my resume nicely.
A quick look at the classes
for the second year showed that several of them were turf specific. Classes such as Advanced Golf Course
Irrigation, Advanced Turfgrass Management, Golf Course Design, and Golf Course
Construction gave us the opportunity to question why we chose to do certain
practices and the possibility that perhaps there could be alternatives to the
traditional line of thinking in Turf Management.
During the first semester Ian
Morrow taught us how to audit irrigation systems in Advanced Golf Course
Irrigation. Combining this new knowledge
with what Jason Pick taught in Advanced Turfgrass management, we quickly learned
that simply irrigating the whole course based on the fact that that’s how it
has always been done, may not necessarily be the best practice. Golf Course Management focused on developing
our personal management philosophies and gave us strategies to deal with
different and unique types of conflict.
A few key benefits to these
classes, besides the hands on training and key industry information being
taught, include the fact that as second years, we walk away with several
manuals and programs that can be easily implemented into any golf course with
only a few tweaks required to personalize each manual. Advanced Turfgrass
Management saw us end the course by building a manual that included a complete
cultural calendar, a winter protection manual, and a fertility program for not
only greens, but also tees, fairways and rough. Golf Course Management saw us
build an employee manual that included employee etiquette standards, best
management practices for all areas of the course, and a functioning job board
that meets all of the described best management practices. Dave Moroz taught
Advanced Golf Course Soils and had us build our own Turf Fertility Calculator.
This calculator allows us to input a wide range of information and show us the
best way to attend to the turf and the soil on our courses.
All of these manuals are going
to be a major asset to me as I enter the industry as a manager. I know and
trust these manuals and calculators and firmly believe that I will continually
use them throughout the years. The fact
that I am walking away from my second year fully equipped with several tools
that I have developed, has allowed me to fully appreciate even more the effort
and direction all of our instructors poured into us over the last eight months.
The second year of the Turfgrass Management program goes over and beyond to
ensure that you are able to leave Olds and enter the industry as a fully
equipped professional.
Jay Green
