8
ARTICLE
2016 SOCCER FIELD OF THE YEAR
2016 Soccer Field of the Year - University Mike A. Myers Stadium & Soccer Field (Austin)
Mike A. Myers Stadium and Soccer Field (MMS) is a multi-use facility located in Austin, TX. and is home to the University of Texas Women’s Soccer team, while also host to the Uni-versities Men’s and Women’s Track program. Construction was completed in 1998, and since then MMS has hosted numerous events ranging from high school to professional. Last year the stadium hosted thirty-six events that included soccer, track, kid’s clinic, and camps. While this may seem like a small amount for a facility it is the daily use that the stadium receives that creates the challenges. Over a typical twelve month span the stadium is only officially closed 3-5 days a year. This is when they repaint their track in December to prepare for the upcom-ing outdoor track season. Someone is using the stadium nearly every day for some form of activ-ity for. A typical soccer season starts in August and will run till November— this creates daily use for practices and games. At the same time in the middle of August the Men’s and Women’s Cross Country team will begin their season. They will use the stadium daily till November running on the grass for warm ups and cool downs. Dur-ing the month of October, the track team will be-gin their workouts for indoor season. Since they do not have an indoor facility the field and sta-dium will be used for that as well. This will con-tinue all the way into December till about a week before Christmas. On a normal day the facility can be used from 6:30 am till around 6:00 pm at night. The stadium uses a Musco lighting system that allows them to conduct events at any time of day or night. In January, track will start up again with soccer starts hosting winter camps. February brings the start of the spring soccer season and that
will run till May with different practice schedules. March brings the Texas Relays, this is one of the largest track meets in the nation, and will consist of four days of track and field being conducted in the stadium. During a track meet the grass portion of the field is used for the shot, discuss, and javelin events. They host two more track meets before concluding the season with the State UIL Track Meet that last three days. During the months of June and July they host several weeks of soccer and track camps. During these months they will conduct their yearly aerification, verticutting, and topdressing when the schedule allows it. This year they finished up camps six days before the start of the new soccer season, leading to a quick turnaround. The playing surface for MMS is a 90,000 sq. ft. GN-1 Bermuda grass surface. In 2013 they re-placed the goal mouths area (600 Sq. foot on each end) with latitude 36 as a test plot. They have an eight zone irrigation system utilizing six Hunter I -40 ON nozzles per station on four different zones and six Hunter I-40 ADJ per station on four stations along the perimeter. They also utilize a Toro turf Guard system to aid in monitoring our water needs. The fertilization program is something that they have been working on for the past three years. In the beginning they were using 10-12 pound of nitrogen per year to maintain the field. One of the main issues on the field was the grass would run and have extremely long stolons. This would lead to scalp in the summer and would not allow them to mow across our field. Last year they had only applied about four pounds in mul-tiple applications using earth works 5-4-5, and should end the year around six. While dropping the nitrogen they are adding potassium and gyp-sum on a monthly basis, along with applications of Kick Soil Conditioner and periodically applica-tions of 12-0-0 with micronutrients. In the three