From the President’s Pen

Navigating Change

The year has really flown by and cooler weather is headed our way! I hope everyone has had a successful season. As the season slows down, I hope you will make time to attend the Deep South Turf Expo in Biloxi, Mississippi. The dates are from October 24th through the 27th. We always have a lot of fun! As usual, we have a huge list of speakers, and the trade show is consistently a great opportunity to see what’s coming next.

There will also be golf tournaments, skeet and trap shooting, as well as a sports field tour and a tailgate party. It’s a great opportunity to earn pesticide points and network as well! If you are coming, please make plans to attend ATA’s Annual Business Meeting the afternoon of October 26th. You’ll hear details regarding current finances, event and attendance numbers, the announcement of the Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, and have the opportunity to cast your vote for the 2023 Board Members. Please attend and be an active member of ATA!

If you didn’t attend the Sports Turf Field Day at the University of Alabama, it was an awesome event. The staff did a great job, and everyone had a great time. A huge thanks to Drew Charcandy (Assistant Director of Athletic Fields at UA), who is on the ATA board, and Jon DeWitt, CSFM (Director of Sports Grounds at UA) for working so hard to organize this event! We really appreciate all the members that came out and supported this event as well.

As many of you know, Melanie Bonds will be stepping down as Executive Director of ATA before the end of the year but will still be around helping in many ways. We want to thank her for the committed years of service to ATA and look forward to seeing her from time to time going forward. We will be welcoming Kayla Cook into the Executive Director position officially sometime after the Deep South Turf Expo, but she has already been very active in the association working with Melanie, organizing functions and board meetings. Kayla has been in the industry for the last seven years and is married to Travis Cook, golf course superintendent at Greystone Founders Course. Talk about a turfgrass power couple!

I want to thank everyone on the Board this year for everything they’ve helped to make happen for ATA. I also want to express sincere gratitude to all our sponsors for being such great partners. I know it’s been a tough year for getting equipment and parts. We have experienced a lot of price increases for everything and had to wait longer to receive orders, but there are so many good people in our industry helping us to navigate these changes. I am hopeful that 2023 will be a little closer to normal so we can focus more on making our industry better than ever.

I have enjoyed working with everyone this year, and I really look forward to seeing how successful the Deep South Turf Expo will be this fall. We need people to be involved and support our industry to keep it growing. That is our goal at ATA — to offer support and grow the turfgrass industry for the next generation!

Ben Anderson

ATA President