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ALSO
IN THIS ISSUE Championship Turf Tender Sounds of Success New Home in Urban Village In the Spirit of the Season Pace Yourself Fill 'er Up With Fries Chancellor's Column Development News Factoids Newsmakers Accomplishments by faculty and staff… |
Championship Turf Tender While
most of the 100 million or so viewers tuned to the Super Bowl last month
had their eyes Mesa
College groundskeeper Rick Covert was dispatched to the Tampa Bay, Florida,
professional football stadium during Super Bowl Week to examine the playing
field along with other turf experts from throughout the nation. This business
travel perk came as a reward for a job well done. Thanks
to Covert’s initiative, the Mesa College football field has undergone
a major facelift. In October, Covert persuaded PRZ, a national sports
turf consulting firm, to use the college football field as a demonstration
for potential clients. This resulted in a $6,000 reseeding and aerating
(coring) of the field. PRZ contributed $4,000 in labor and supplies, while
Dave Evans, Mesa College athletics dean, quickly provided department funds
for the remaining costs after learning of Covert’s coup. “Rick’s
hard work not only benefits our athletics program, but also our students
enrolled in physical education classes that utilize the fields,”
Evans said. Kim
Sturm, Mesa plant operations supervisor, is also very happy with the job
Covert is doing. “Rick not only shares my vision of adhering to the
highest of standards to maintain our athletic fields, but he is also making
it happen. Many students receive athletic scholarships, and we should
follow Rick’s example and be doing all we can to support their ambitions
and dreams,” she said. In
response to all the praise, Covert credits much of the professional look
of the fields to the help of fellow groundskeepers Wayne Koppel and O.J.
Romo. Sturm
pointed out that Covert was also instrumental in the recent acquisition
of a new $14,000 lawn mower, a joint purchase of Mesa and district plant
operations. For
his efforts, Covert was granted the professional development opportunity.
He traveled to Florida for Super Bowl Week in late January. Attending
the game itself, however, was not part of the package. Also,
Covert took part in a group inspection of five nearby Major League Baseball
spring training fields, plus examined the University of Southern Florida
gridiron. Covert
has been a groundskeeper with the district for 25 years. The past four
years have been at Mesa; before that, he worked at City College. Always
busy, Covert was one of the few district employees working Christmas week.
He was tending to the turf in the campus stadium where the University
of Oregon Ducks held practices for five days in preparation for the Holiday
Bowl. Even on his days off, Covert often shows up at Mesa’s athletic fields to watch the college and high school games. “I enjoy watching student competition,” he said. |
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