What has it been like to be on Auburn’s grounds crew during a time with no sports? – Montgomery Advertiser

Plainsman Park, home of Auburn baseball.(Photo: Zach Willard)

AUBURN On March 22, Jon Bailey tried to see if he could take the trash out to the street, check the mail and make it back inside his house in less than 120 seconds. Just to remember the feeling of the fifth-inning drag again.

Five days later, he intentionally threw his newspaper at the mailman. Just to see if he would charge me or not.

OK, maybe those are just jokes that Bailey posted on Twitter. But what they mean is real. He misses baseball, and in a way that is unique to most in the Auburn community Bailey is the head groundskeeper at Plainsman Park.

For him and the rest of Auburns grounds crew, the last 10 weeks have been very, very strange.

People think football season is our busiest time, said Eric Kleypas, Auburns director of turf and landscape services. Thats busy, but not anything like spring. Spring, the hour demands are just so high. So its taken us a while to kind of shift gears and get into a normal work week, so to speak, versus what were used to.

Wednesday marks 10 weeks since the last games played on campus at Auburn softballs 2-1 win over Georgia State and baseballs 4-3 loss to Wofford on March 10. The SEC officially shut down competition the next day because of the coronavirus pandemic. Before long, the entire spring season was canceled.

Had it not been, and had life still been normal, Auburns grounds crew would have worked 40 home events over the past 70 days 19 baseball games, 17 softball games, two outdoor track and field meets, a spring soccer scrimmage and the A-Day spring football game, plus countless practices in between.

Instead, the five full-time employees currently on staff have worked mostly in solitude, without the help of the 12-14 turf students they normally have.

Its just really weird for most of us who have been doing this, said Zach Willard, who is the manager of athletic turf. Borderline eerie, almost, because Im supposed to be at the ballpark all day on a Friday, from 7 a.m. till 10 or 11 p.m. Thats just ingrained into who I am at this point.

Willard isnt exaggerating. Getting a field ready for play is exhausting work. For a home baseball game at Plainsman Park, it usually starts at 7 a.m. and runs through 3 p.m. They have to mow the grass, water the infield dirt anywhere from six to 10 times depending on the temperature outside, do detailed clay work on the mound and around home plate on the field and in both bullpens, and manage the landscaping around the ballpark. And thats just before the game. During it, they drag the dirt between innings, fix any issues that arise and pull the tarp if it rains. After, they stick around to get the field ready for the next day.

So you can imagine the comedown from that has been quite a shock to their systems. The grounds crew normally works 80-hour weeks during the spring. This year, though, they have only recently gone back to working even 40 hours for a while, they were just coming in early, getting done what they needed toand heading home.

The Auburn Soccer Complex.(Photo: Zach Willard)

The experience has been strange, Kleypas said. But it has also been freeing, in a way. For one, they have all gotten to spend more time with their families than they normally would this time of year. Kleypas has a wife and a son. Willard and his wife Kendra, who works for Auburns athletics communications department, have two young daughters.

Its really allowing us to make up for a lot of lost time, Willard said. As weird its been to not be working, its also been very refreshing to connect with my kids in a way that Im normally not used to doing.

And when it comes to their jobs, 10 weeks of no sports has given members of the grounds crew time on the fields they have never had before.

At Plainsman Park, Bailey has already completed the process of transitioning the field from ryegrass (which thrives in colder temperatures but struggles when the weather heats up) to Bermudagrass (which has exceptional heat tolerance but dies out in the winter). Last year, because the baseball team needed the field nearly every day through its trip to the College World Series, that work wasnt done until the middle of June.

The same is true at Jordan-Hare Stadium. Pat Dye Field isnt used nearly as much during the spring as Hitchcock Field across the street (just a few scrimmages and A-Day), but it still needs to look perfect all times for recruiting purposes a field with patches of dead grass or dirt has never impressed anybody.

For that reason, Willard said the grounds crew often does a lot of sod work during the spring. If the Bermudagrass isnt coming in correctly at some spots, they just replace it in order to speed up the transition. And they have to plan that work around the football teams schedule, so they dont interfere with visits or camps.

But on-campus recruiting was banned early in March and will be through at least the end of June because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has allowed Kleypas, Willard and Co. to let the grass at Jordan-Hare grow in naturally. They had originally planned on replacing the turf before the 2020 football season. Now, they wont have to.

Rather than tip-toeing around schedules, we pretty much have free reign to go about how we want to get our fields back in shape for the fall, Willard said. Its actually been freeing. Were thinking on a different wavelength than we have the last decade or so, because recruiting has become so heavy. Its been nice. Its been really nice.

The Auburn football team's outdoor practice field.(Photo: Zach Willard)

As a result, Willard said, all of Auburns fields are in tremendous shape. Theres just one thing missing, and thats the people who enjoy them the players plying their trade, the coaches watching from their perch on the sideline or dugout, and the fans in the stands.

Thats one of the coolest parts of our job, kind of that initial moment of the fans coming up the stairwells and coming out of the tunnels and taking a look at the field for the first time that day, Willard continued. We take great pride in the fact that our players, coaches and fans love our playing fields. We do what we do for our coaches and student-athletes. We also do what we do for our fans. To not have the fans in the ballparks to enjoy their ballfields, as well, is tough on us.

So you can count Auburns grounds crew among the many waiting anxiously for sports to resume, no matter the workload and time demands that entails.

We miss it. This is what we went into this field for, Kleypas said. Were ready for our student-athletes to get back on campus. Were ready to get back to whatever the new normal will be.

Josh Vitale is the Auburn beat writer for the Montgomery Advertiser. You can follow him on Twitter at @JoshVitale. To reach him by email,click here.

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What has it been like to be on Auburn's grounds crew during a time with no sports? - Montgomery Advertiser