Last Saturday, the Pitt football team wrapped up spring practices with its annual Blue and Gold scrimmage, kicking off the longest portion of the offseason. While the players turn their attention to final exams and the coaches to the transfer portal, sports turf operations manager Tom Goyne and his grounds crew will continue their work maintaining facilities across the Pittsburgh area.
With the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex and Acrisure Stadium dormant for the coming months, Goyne and his staff will spend the coming months primarily focused on the fields at St. Vincent College, the home of Steelers Training Camp. In fact, the crew that manages the Steelers’ and Panthers’ facilities is the primary caretaker of the fields in Latrobe.
“From snow melt until the end of camp we’re really active [there] … We dictate everything that goes for their football season,” Goyne said.
Starting around the end of Pitt’s spring camp, Goyne’s crew is working in Latrobe about three days a week. When the heat of the summer arrives in June, they are spending upwards of seven days a week there.
When his crew returns to Pittsburgh for the fall, contractors keep an eye on the fields for them. By the time St. Vincent College takes over Chuck Noll Field for their own use, only the lines need to be painted. Maintenance, such as mowing and fertilization, is taken care of.
This extra work comes on top of having to manage two separate facilities. Most teams in the National Football League employ split crews between their practice facilities and stadiums, but Goyne believes there are positives to sharing a crew across locations.
“We’re all on the same page. We’re managing the same between everybody. It’s a good setup. I like it. It’s challenging,” Goyne said.
Once training camp rolls around for the Steelers, a couple members of the staff stay behind to manage the fields, while the rest refocus on the South Side practice facility and Acrisure Stadium for Pitt to begin their preseason and the Steelers to host their preseason games.
Following the concert and event season over the summer, the real work begins. At the end of Pitt’s training camp, the field at the stadium goes through its first makeover. A new field is installed for the first of three times to prepare for the upcoming season. Goyne says that in the warmer months, a newly installed field can withstand the wear and tear of eight to 10 games.
Once the calendar turns to September, Goyne and his crew enter a weekly cycle akin to Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.” As soon as the week’s previous contests end, the team immediately begins mowing, cleaning the field and filling in the many divots created in the wake of football’s highest levels.
On Tuesday, the game field goes mostly untouched, allowing it to recover from the hours of stress caused by professional and collegiate football. But with a singular crew for both the teams’ practice and gameday facilities, there are no days off.
“In the NFL, Tuesday is a league-wide off day if you have a normal Sunday game. Well, for us, we have 9 a.m. Pitt practice,” Goyne said.
After the field’s lone day of convalescence, Goyne and his team are back at Acrisure Stadium Wednesday through Friday for what he calls “presentation prep” — everything that makes the field look crisp on weekend afternoons.
The entire painting process takes two days to complete. The first day of painting entails laying out the field’s skeleton. All the bright, white yard lines, hashes and end zones are painted. The following day, the crew stencils out and paints the midfield and end zone logos as well as the numbers.
Once the playing surface is finished, all that’s left to complete is mandatory NFL field testing on Friday or Saturday, depending on whether Pitt also plays at home that weekend. This includes moisture and hardness testing to ensure the surface is consistent with others around the league and meets the NFL’s high standards for field quality.
Goyne added they are always keeping close tabs on their moisture content, which goes hand-in-hand with field firmness. The staff measures the field’s vital signs before games and throughout the week with the use of both in-ground and handheld monitors.
“The field plays a lot better when we’re in our desired moisture range. It recovers a lot better,” Goyne said.
Once the morning of game day arrives, all Goyne and his team need to do is mow the field, set the sidelines and pylons, cover sprinkler heads and get out of the way until the game finishes. Then, Groundhog Day comes around again.
As the fall marches on, games wear down the Kentucky bluegrass of the field, and as temperatures drop, the field requires another shot of botox. For Acrisure Stadium, that means a re-sod. The first renovation occurs in the middle of October which requires ripping up the middle of the field as soon as possible — often immediately following a game.
As the months become cooler, the lifespan of a new field drops to about six games. This means a third and final resod is necessary after the final Pitt game and Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League championship games — typically following Thanksgiving.
In order to maintain the high quality required for an NFL stadium, the crew also employs a heating system beneath the surface to prevent the ground from freezing and keep the turf growing into the winter. This heating system proved vital this winter when the Steelers needed to practice for the playoffs at Acrisure Stadium because the ground had frozen at the practice facility.
The day before a game, the heating is shut off to allow the soil to firm up and the grass to reach the same temperature of the air. This prevents condensation from forming on the grass, similar to the way it would on a windshield on a cool day.
Once the Steelers’ season concludes, it’s time to store everything away and begin the offseason maintenance. For Goyne, the off-season work — ensuring tools and machines are properly maintained and calibrated — is just as important as the work in the middle of the season.
“I just tell the guys, ‘We don’t want any of our stuff out of order or not working come October, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the rain,’” Goyne said.
Once the off-season upkeep concludes, next year’s plans are laid out and spring rolls around, it’s back to Latrobe to begin the preparation for the next fall.
Goyne and his crew are always looking to improve year to year. He said he is constantly exchanging ideas with his colleagues around the league, looking to improve his regimen for the facilities he maintains. When Liverpool FC played a match at Acrisure Stadium in July, he kept close contact with their turf manager to provide the best possible playing surface and improve his own work.
“I would say each year that I’ve been here, just finished my fourth year, each year we’ve gotten better at what we do,” Goyne said.
There is hardly an offseason for a grounds crew, especially for Goyne and his crew managing three facilities, the closest pair a five-mile drive apart. But just like for Pittsburgh weatherman Phil Connors in “Groundhog Day,” the next day becomes that much easier as the previous passes for Goyne and his hardworking crew.
The post The grass is always greener at Acrisure Stadium appeared first on The Pitt News.