Notre Dame Used Testing, Recommendations to Select Peat from Dakota for Field Renovation

Jan. 2000

When the University of Notre Dame made the decision in 1995 to add 20,000 seats to its football stadium, increasing the capacity to 80,225, the time was right to also renovate the playing field.

The field had been built along with the stadium in 1930 and, although the sod had been replaced several times, the original drainage and heavy soil had never been updated. "Back in the 1930s," Dale Getz, Notre Dame's athletic facilities manager, says, "playing fields were built with heavier soil and high crowns that helped to drain them. If we had long, soaking rains, the field became pretty muddy, especially if it was late in the season.

"But the field hadn't performed that badly and it had been hard to justify any renovation until it was decided to add the 20,000 seats to the stadium. As a part of the stadium project, we had to renovate the infra structure including the sanitary and storm sewer systems under and around the stadium. That was the opportunity we used to rebuild the playing field."

Renovation of the field involved removing about 24 inches of top soil, the installation of a new sub-drain system, and the development of a sand-based root zone for the new sod.

Enter Dakota Peat — That's where Dakota Peat came onto the scene. After interviewing several field construction firms, the university decided on the S. W. Franks Co., Cleveland, OH, which has done a number of high-profile fields all over the country, as the contractor. Dr. David Minner was selected as the agronomic consultant.

"Both spoke highly of Dakota Peat as the medium that they would like to use in the sand," Getz says. "We had some testing done, looked at all the specifications of their peat and felt that in the long run we would be better off with Dakota reed-sedge peat than that of the competition.

"We had been working with Jerry Schmitz of Dakota for several years. He had provided us with all the research that the company had done. And we looked at research that had been done for other universities...specifications on longevity, how long it would take to breakdown, salt indexes and all the technical data that need to be considered when building a field.

Happy with result — "The field has worked out really well," Getz says. "When you build a sand-based field, you have to have a good source of organic matter or you don't have any water-holding capacity. Dakota's reed-sedge peat holds not only the water but the nutrients, too, making them more available to the plants as opposed to just leaching through."

For the project, the peat and sand were mixed at the Best Sand Co. at Chardon, OH, and then shipped to Notre Dame. It was put in place in the fall of 1995, with the new 100 percent Kentucky bluegrass sod laid about the third week in March 1966. "We played our first game on the new field that September," Getz says.

Getz, who manages Notre Dame's football and baseball stadiums plus another 78 acres of sports turf, knew he would want to top-dress the new football field for the first year or two. With that in mind, he had an additional 150 tons of the sand-peat mix material prepared for those later applications. That way, when top-dressing was done, the exact same mix in the same ratios were used, eliminating the chance of any layering of the soils.

Performed well — "We've just finished our third season on the new field. It has performed well... even right off the bat," Getz says. "The peat gave us some stability with the sand and provided us with the nutrient-holding capacity that was needed. As fields mature, even the sand-based fields, grass grows and dies as part of the process of the growth of grass. This adds organic matter but you need to start out with a good source of that organic matter to hold the nutrients and moisture in the beginning.

"We were very pleased with how Dakota peat has performed and also with how the company performed, how they met delivery schedules and were there as a resource," he says.