EDUCATION SPOTLIGHT
LOUISA
COUNTY
HIGH SCHOOL TURF MANAGEMENT
The
Louisa County High School Turf Program was started in 2004 by Chris Whitlow. The next person to take charge of the program was Mike Hopkins, who won several awards, including Field of the Year in 2011 (football), and in 2013 (soccer) field. Mike retired in 2014. He was followed by Adrian Austin who taught at LCHS for two years until Logan Horne, the current program director, took over in 2016. Logan Horne graduated from Louisa County High school and was a turf management student under Chris Whitlow. Taking those classes in high school drove him to have a passion for the turf industry and pursue a career as a turfgrass manager and educator. After graduating from LCHS, Horne earned an associate’s degree in turf management in 2010 and a bachelor’s degree in Crop soils and environmental studies with an emphasis in turf management in 2012, both from Virginia Tech. Horne has worked as a turfgrass professional for the Virginia Tech field crew, Columbus Crew (MLS), Cincinnati Bengals (NFL), Jacksonville Jaguars (NFL), and ITAC (innovative Turf grass application and consulting.) He began his work at LCHS in July 2016. “This is an entirely different program from when I was in high school,” says Horne. “The program manages more fields and more equipment for even more sports teams. LCHS has added new sports like field hockey and have started accommodating youth sports programs. They have transitioned all 4 fields to Bermuda grass and installed irrigation systems. We have moved irrigation maintenance, painting fields and aerification all in house. We service and manage 95% of our equipment in house.”
22 | VIRGINIA TURFGRASS JOURNAL March/April 2021 www.vaturf.org
But not everything is new. Horne says, “Whenever we would come into class and ask what we were doing for the day, Mr. Whitlow would always say the same thing, ‘We are going to save the world today.’ I use this line all the time and even have it written as my class objective a lot.” “The passionate and hardworking students are still here. We have some wonderful students come through this program and they put a lot of extra time and hours into making these fields great and playable for our community.”
THE PROGRAM “The students do all of the work on the fields -- they mow, paint, layout fields, fix irrigation -- all of it,” Horne shares. The advanced class chooses paint schemes for football games. (Photo 1) Some examples include: blackout game, white out game, camo game, stars and stripes, breast cancer awareness/ pink out game, green and gold, pink camo game. They choose which logos to use and their placement. “As much as I can put on the students I do. I may have students on 4 different fields in a class period working.” They do all the set up and break down for the athletic games. They help/do the maintenance on equipment (with Horne’s supervision). Students have done field trips in the past, mostly to local elementary schools to work on fields on cross country trails. They even built an outdoor classroom at one elementary school. The Advanced Class does private pesticide license testing in spring to become certified to apply pesticides. The program covers all the basic information on turf management. Everything from grass ID, to weed and disease ID to soils, IPM, BMP, aerification, fertilizers, and pesticides.
