When the Iowa State athletic players take the field, they know they don’t have to worry about the quality of the surface they are playing on, thanks to the hard work of Mike Andresen and his ground crew.

“The crew’s ultimate goal is to make ISU a place where athletes like to compete and that coaches can use in their recruiting,” Andresen said.

Andresen came to ISU on April 10 after spending five years with the Iowa Cubs in Des Moines. “I have been around a program that has gone through stadium reconstruction with the renovations of Sec Taylor Stadium (the I-Cubs home park),” he said, referring to the construction of the Jacobsen Building.

“My philosophy about my job is that when a coach starts recruiting, he can have the best fields in the country in his arsenal,” Andresen said.

Andresen, who serves as the athletic turf manager at ISU, became interested in this line of work back in high school. “I worked at a golf course while I was in high school, which drew my interest toward the area,” Andresen said. “It’s common to romanticize about this job,” he said.

It takes a little more skill than your basic lawn mowing tactics, however. “You really have to know what you are doing in a detailed manner,” Andresen said. “Any person can mow grass, but doing it properly is another matter.”

Andresen finds that there are plenty of details that he has to tend to every day. “Since I arrived at ISU, my days have been packed,” he said. “I have been working six days a week, sometimes seven,” Andresen said.

Much of this is due to the new grass field at Cyclone Stadium. In the past couple weeks, Andresen and his crew have been putting in 12 hours each work day to get the field ready for the upcoming season.

The crew has been working hard since day one, as they got the last roll of the natural surface laid down on May 7. “It was rather specific work,” Andresen said. “It is a sand-based field, which meant that all of the sand has to be specified, as well as the peat that went into the field.”

Andresen said he had help from individuals that had a great deal of expertise in the area.

“Dave Minner was very instrumental in the specifics,” he said. “He had worked with a number of the different sports on their playing fields, which was a large help.

“Dr. Nick Christians was also very helpful. It was nice to have his trained eye and the outstanding resources that he brought to the project.”

The attraction to his line of work at ISU would primarily be the new football field, Andresen said, but there is much more to his work than that. “We take care of the football practice fields, which include the two-a-day areas, the two soccer fields, the baseball and softball diamonds, the cross country field….it all adds up,” he said.

The crew that Andresen heads has a large amount of experience under their belt. The two full-time employees, Dick Doyle and Dale Roe, have a combined total of 48 years of experience for ISU. Roe, who is in charge of painting the field, has 28 of those years under his belt.

With the new football field comes changes in the painting routine. “With the artificial turf, we only had to paint the field once,” Andresen said. “This year, however, we have already painted three times, and there hasn’t been a single game played on it yet.”

Andresen said they have used about 16,000 gallons of paint on all of the fields that they tend. When you factor in that each gallon of paint is mixed with a gallon of water, it makes the equivalent of 32,000 gallons.

The part-time help includes between three and four ISU students, who Andresen said have done a wonderful job.

“The students come in during the afternoon, and that is when we really start getting things going,” Andresen said. “The students make the full-time workers that much more efficient.”

Not all problems with the turf are necessarily related to the wear and tear the athletic teams cause. One example Andresen gave was the weathering effect that the marching band has on the ground.

Stadium concerts were also listed. “They won’t be having any concerts this year, but there will be some eventually,” Andresen said. “There are methods of protection, but we’ll have to sit down and discuss which way we want to go. The inexpensive ways are like rolling the dice.”

Andresen addressed the prospect of goal posts being torn down. “I would encourage the fans to choose way to celebrate aside from running rampant on a new $800,000 field,” he said.