How The Philadelphia Eagles Maintain The Turf at Lincoln Financial Field
Story, video by Whitney Ullman
The Philadelphia Eagles keep their playing turf in top condition, thus ensuring the health and safety of the NFL players who put their bodies, and careers on the line when they play at Lincoln Financial Field. We chatted with Tony Leonard the Director of Grounds for the Philadelphia Eagles, as well as Matt Foster the President and CEO of Aquatrols. Let’s see what they say about keeping the field safe as well as some of the interesting finds, after the game!
When we spoke with Matt Foster the President and CEO of Aquatrols about explaining how the moisture in the soil is managed, he added:
Matt: You don’t want it too wet, you don’t want it too dry. Various products do various things. I know it seems like they should all be the same, but sometimes you need products to help water penetrate a very hard and compacted tight soil, and sometimes you just need products that help manage moisture – especially in what we might call a high performance turf such as in a football field or a golf course green. Those are usually managed to a much greater degree. They’re some of those expensively maintained square footage on the planet, so they wanna make sure that you get your moisture right.
Whitney: If the moisture isn’t right on the field, will that effect the player’s play?
Matt: What I don’t wanna do is pretend like I’m the superintendent of the Eagle’s stadium. But I’m comfortable in answering generically that of course, whether it’s a golf course or a soccer pitch or a football field, you certainly don’t want mud. It’s really the turf surface that they’re wanting to be playing on, and that’s where having a soil that’s too wet or too dry can have a negative impact.
Whitney: How does it feel knowing that your product is used, not just commercially, but in this specific case for the NFL?
Matt: When you think about how conscientious and how much effort the NFL, and teams like the Eagles work, and how hard they work at cultivating their brand, to know that they want to use our product kind of validates our position that we’re the best at what we do.
Whitney: What do you want readers to know about your product?
Matt: What’s neat about our products and our company is that we’ve been around for over 62 years and we develop products that come from a position of conservation and efficiency. That’s what we focus on more than anything else. We consider water to be, arguably, the worlds most precious renewable natural resource and we think that should be respected. We actually have a tagline that says, “Respect the drop”, because we believe it’s that important.
