UMass Amherst Turf Club Students Participate in Two National Turf Bowl Competitions

January 2008

Eleven student members of the UMass Turf Club competed against 92 other university teams in the National Collegiate Turf Bowl at the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) annual meeting held in Orlando, FL on January 28 - Feburary 2, 2008. In addition, 2 other student UMass Turf Club members competed in the Annual Turf Bowl at the Sports Turf Managers Association (STMA) conference held in Phoenix, AZ on January 15-19, 2008.

The UMass teams in the GCSAA Turf Bowl included undergraduates Matthew Kozlowski, Zachary Purinton, Richard Walworth, James Popko, Eric Still, Gregory Atanasio, Ian Bass, Shawn Spear, and Ry Mutti, and graduate students Lindsey Hoffman and Jason Dowgiewicz. Undergraduates Ryan Bjorn and Michael Josselyn participated in the STMA Turf Bowl.

To prepare for the GSCAA and STMA Turf Bowl compeetitions, the Turf Club students met once a week over the course of the fall semester in 2007 to review their 3 years of course work at UMass Amherst in Turfgrass Management. Subjects included turfgrass growth and development, identification of turfgrass diseases, insects and weeds, as well as business and financial management. Many faculty members in the Department of Plant, Soil and Insect Sciences (PSIS) collaborated on the review effort, including Scott Ebdon, Pat Vittum, Geunhwa Jung, Prasanta Bhowmik, Peter Veneman, and Michelle DaCosta.

The UMass Turf Club worked very hard to raise over $8,000 to send the students to the GCSAA and STMA Bowls. Significant extracurricular fundraising efforts by the students included fertilizing and renovating home lawns, as well as selling UMass Turf Club T-shirts. Students have already started fundraising for the 2009 conferences, and hope to make the GCSAA and STMA Turf Bowl Competitions as annual events for the Turf Club.

Without a doubt, attendence at these conferences has proven to be a great opportunity for UMass students to meet and network with turfgrass industry professionals from around the country. PSIS is very proud of its students, as they are consisdently fine representatives of the department, the College of Natural Resources & the Environment, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst.