The smell of freshly cut grass and the sound and vibrations of a weedeater became familiar senses to me during my internship over the summer. I worked for Calvert County Parks and Recreation this past summer as an intern. Hallowing Park, Dunkirk Park, and Ward Farm Park were the locations where I worked to complete various tasks and learn from the park managers how to sustain a turfgrass facility. The job consisted of weed eating, cutting grass, and maintaining the baseball and Bermuda fields. Bermuda grass is a warm-season grass that is perfect for athletic fields because of its durability and tolerance towards heavy foot traffic.
One of the larger projects I was a part of was verticutting the Bermuda fields. Verticutting removes thatch which is the build-up of decaying organic matter below the grass blades. Thatch can be beneficial but too much can prevent water and nutrients from reaching the roots. Removing the thatch can also encourage more lateral growth creating an overall thicker and denser playing surface. The verticutter is attached to the back of a tractor and has vertical blades that pull up the thatch as opposed to rotary blades on a traditional mower that trim the tops of the grass blades. The verticutter will pull up pieces of the Bermuda plant and these pieces are called sprigs. Sprigs are like sod they can be replanted and will take root. My coworkers and I would plant these sprigs in areas of the field where the grass was dying as a way of repairing the field. I also worked on several other projects within the parks such as installing drainage lines on an athletic field at Dunkirk Park and installing new field goal posts on the football fields. In order to maintain optimal playability, baseball fields need to be raked and have fresh foul lines painted every day. After the baseball fields were taken care of I would begin weedeating or mowing wherever it was required. I would also complete miscellaneous tasks throughout the day such as moving soccer goals, cleaning the bathrooms, and fixing fences.
Floating around the three different parks was very insightful because it allowed me to learn how different supervisors manage and lead their crews. One of my favorite tasks was cutting grass with the Toro Groundsmaster 360, the mower was a lot larger than anything I had driven in the past and the mowing decks on the side made the whole machine fun to operate. The toughest job was filling the footers for the new field goalposts with over 5000 pounds of cement on the hottest days of the summer. A quote from my internship supervisor that stood out to me was “The difference between being a manager and being a laborer is not knowing how to operate all the equipment or even knowing about turfgrass but being able to manage people.”
By the end of my internship, I was showing a new employee around the park and teaching him some of the things I had learned since the start of the summer. I learned a lot in my time with Calvert County and would definitely consider a career in the parks department. Operating the various equipment will transfer over to other jobs I work in the field. Visiting the three different parks exposed me to different styles of management and taught me lessons I will use in the future of my career. I am very excited to learn to use the lessons I learned from my internship in the classroom this semester and in the future of my career.
