UC Davis turf tenders just received extra incentive to make sure the grass is always greener on your side of campus. Last month the Grounds Division won its first national award in the universities and colleges category from the Sports Turf Managers Association. The award, for the softball field of the year, was given to the revamped women's softball field on the corner of La Rue Road and Richards Boulevard. Fame won't make the division lean back on those big mowers and let the grass grow under its feet, says Grounds Supervisor Ruben Garcia. "We're going to be looking pretty hard at the baseball field as our next challenge. And on a bigger scale, we plan to implement a comprehensive sports turf management plan for the campus." The Grounds Division sees a direct connection between its work and athletic excellence, says lead groundskeeper and turf specialist Roger Adamson. "We really put out the effort to make sure that the games are fair to both teams, since they are in competition -- and we don't want them slipping and sliding in a mud pit," he says. Adamson is particularly proud of the revamped softball field. "The Aggie's women's softball team was among the best in the league last year. We figure they need a field that matches their ranking." The particular group of grounds workers that made the play for the national award included Adamson, George Ortiz, Cutberto Santana, Ted Richards and Matt Forrest. "The criteria for winning were that the field had to be safe and playable," says Ortiz, grounds superintendent for turf. To meet those criteria, Ortiz and crew reconfigured the irrigation system so that it could be more flexible, allowing for short shots of water across the turf without allowing the sprinklers to reach the infield playing surface. Then they replaced the clay infield with an 80 percent cinder/20 percent clay composite and hand-seeded the lawn so that it had co-existing cool-season rye grass and warm-season Bermuda. Adamson said the grounds crew was careful to make sure the clay-cinder infield was perfectly level with the grass that surrounds it on three sides so that no ankle-twisting lip existed. In addition, a cinder-clay warning track was built around the edge of the outfield grass -- an upgrade considered important for high-grade softball fields. Adamson himself aerated the turf each time softball outfielders pounded down the grass during a game. Transforming the field became a passion for Ortiz and Adamson. Although they work a 6 a.m.-2:30 p.m. shift, each returned on evenings and weekends last summer after softball games, toting hoses to water particularly parched parts of the field and sowing more rye grass seeds to make sure the cool-weather turf was filling in. By September, when it was time to take photos for the contest, the field was just about perfect. Now the unit is ready to aim for more awards, starting with the baseball field of the year award in 2001. It will take that long to re-landscape, replace the infield clay with a cinder-clay mix, and paint the bleachers and dugout. The Grounds Division is also conscious of what visitors think of their work when they drive on campus and see the open fields, especially along Russell Boulevard and LaRue Road. Grounds Division Manager Sal Genito says, "I tell our ground crew that it is one of the first images of the campus when visitors arrive and they start to form an opinion, and it's the last thing they see when they leave, so it's important that those two images are positive ones." Lisa Lucio Gough, a graduate student in cell and developmental biology and Dateline's summer intern, contributed to this story.