The future of sports field management is in good hands! Congratulations to Aidan Huedepohl, Joseph Lofland, Ryan Daub, and Kyler Mcgowan from Penn State University on winning the 2025 SFMA Student Challenge Cup! #SFMA#StudentChallenge#NextGen@agsciences
The recently twitterless .@TurfEnto asked me to share this student success story. .@PSUTurf students took 1st and 2nd at the SFMA Collegiate Turf Bowl Competition. Congrats to him and to our students.
NEW: Surveillance footage captures the moment a 100 foot wide and 30 foot deep sinkhole swallows a soccer field in Alton, Illinois.
The footage shows bleachers and a light pole getting completely swallowed by the sinkhole at Gordon Moore Park.
According to local reports, the sinkhole was caused by an underground mine owned by New Frontier Materials.
Thankfully, no one was injured.
“No one was injured in the incident, which has been reported to officials at the Mine Safety Health Administration in accordance with applicable regulations,” said a New Frontier Materials rep.
“Safety is our top priority. We will work with the city to remediate this issue as quickly and safely as possible to ensure minimal impact on the community.”
Source: KSDK News
For five years we've had the privilege of helping tell the stories of our industry through our Pioneers in the Field campaign. The excitement keeps building and we are thrilled to bring you this year's class! Long hours, legacy and a love for the game. https://t.co/rPGRjTjTIY
Very proud of @ZackNewsomeTurf. As part of our internship program, students get the chance to be the superintendent of one of the courses for a week, and Zack has done a phenomenal job overseeing operations on the North Course. Good luck back at @PSUTurf this fall!
On the 27th straight day of filming “Forrest Gump,” Tom Hanks was tired & worried.
During a scene on the famous park bench, Hanks stopped & said to director Bob Zemeckis,
“Hey, Bob…is anybody going to care about this movie? I don’t think anybody’s going to care.”
Bob replied,
“It’s a minefield, Tom. You never know what’s good…It’s a minefield! It’s a goddam minefield! We may be sowing the seeds of our own destruction.”
Tom Hanks told this story after he was asked, “When I ask for a memory from your career, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?”
He said that what Zemeckis said was true of every movie he’s worked on:
“There’s never any guarantee...You do not know if it is going to work out.”
Takeaway 1:
Hanks is the 5th-most highest-grossing actor of all time.
And yet, the stickiest memory of his career is the feeling of uncertainty.
Rarer than talent or work ethic, the poet John Keats wrote, is the ability to step into and push through doubts and uncertainties.
In 1817, Keats wrote a letter to his brothers to share this exciting realization.
“At once it struck me,” Keats wrote, “what quality went to form a Man of Achievement … Negative Capability.”
Keats explains that “Negative Capability” is “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
Takeaway 2:
Those who possess Negative Capability, who can sit with uncertainty, who can spend months or years in the minefield that is working on something while knowing that there is a real possibility no one will care about it—they often possess another quality.
They do what they do, not as a means to some end (money, fame, awards, etc.), but for the sake of doing it.
When asked about one of his movies that commercially failed, Hanks said,
"I loved making that movie. I loved writing it, I loved being with it. I love all the people in it."
As Ryan Holiday once told me, "The work has to be the win."
You control the effort, he says, not the results.
"So ultimately, you have to love doing it. You have to get to a place where doing the work is the win and everything else is extra.”
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“Life is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get.” — Forrest Gump
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Congratulations to all graduates from Penn State Turf Programs including Associates, Bachelors, Masters of Professional Studies, and a special congratulations to Dr. Evan Mascitti @argil_acharya who graduated with his PhD in Soil Science @agsciences@PSUPlantScience@PSUTurf
Good luck to the Eagles and 49ers today. I just want to say “Hell of a job” to Tony, Eddie and the rest of the @Eagles crew not only for this game, but all season. They always do great work. I’m proud that both Championship games will be on natural grass.
It’s been a crazy year. We have gone from over 100* in August to -8 in December. We have had 11 games with the 12th being the 5th straight AFCC. Thankful for my crew and all the work that has gone into getting us through the season. They are the BEST! We have learned so much!