A few years ago, Brentsville District High School teacher Drew Miller met with a representative from The Toro Company while attending a National Sports Field Management Association conference.
Miller, who leads the Prince William County school’s turf grounds academy, and his students did a podcast series with the company, and after that opportunity, the company wanted to do more. Over the next two years, Miller’s students partnered with Toro on different projects.
Now, the company is teaming up with the Northern Virginia school to form what Miller called a first-of-its-kind partnership between a leading industry company and a career and technical education program.
“We’re able to develop our students better, and able to develop them more for jobs at the professional stage with the new equipment that they’ve given us,” Miller said.
Through the new partnership, the program, now called the “Brentsville Turf Toro Grounds Academy,” has new equipment. The company is also offering funding for two graduating seniors to receive $2,500 scholarships if they’re planning to pursue careers in the field.
“We’re excited for the scholarship opportunities that are specifically just for our students in the turf program, for future opportunities in two-year, four-year education, and being able to see the overall growth of our industry as a whole,” Miller said.
The program, which is included as part of Prince William County’s career and technical education offerings, focuses on preparing students for job opportunities in the turf management industry, which range from “landscape to sports fields, golf courses, greenhouses,” Miller said.
Through the program’s classes, students manage and design the fields on the Nokesville school’s campus. Some students have attended the Little League Softball World Series and helped prepare the Charlotte, North Carolina, field for the ACC Championship football game.
“We also get to prep softball, baseball,” sophomore Aiden O’Neill said. “We even take care of our artificial turf for our spring sports, but there’s everything from sports fields and then we also do the landscaping around school.”
Much of the equipment the school’s added to its fleet includes things such as infield groomers for baseball and softball fields. The school also has new mowers and carts, which Miller said creates “a better opportunity for our students.”
Senior Macie Mayes, who’s part of the program for the first time this year, said she didn’t know the extent of the professional and educational opportunities in the field.
“It’s just crazy, all of our new equipment and the new facility being built,” Mayes said. “And the scholarships. There’s just so many opportunities we have.”
During football season, the students maintain the fields and prepare the paint machines. They’re also responsible for making sure the field is even, so players don’t hurt themselves. Once it’s clear the sidelines are straight, O’Neill said, “then you start painting. After everything’s done with there, get the nice little touches, the end ones, the logos, you’re ready to go.”
For softball and baseball, students make sure the warning tracks are in good shape and that patterns are rolled out on the fields.
A focused class can get that done in about an hour, O’Neill said.
Around 232 students are enrolled in the program, Miller said, and by 2026, an empty plot of land behind the school’s buildings will be used for a high school turf grass research center. Construction is scheduled to start next year.
“We’ll have a full facility to facilitate all of our classes, where we hope to connect students with professors running trials for companies, and just broadening the scope of what we can do here and what we can accomplish as a high school little turf grass management program,” Miller said.
Through the program, Miller said students are learning the NFL or MLB standard. And the Toro brand, he said, is “something that’s really sacred in our industry.”
“That’s our goal, is to provide those students the opportunity to see what the professional stage is like here in the high school classroom,” he said.
For student Kat Lambert, the partnership “widens our range of things we can do now, and it gives us a lot of opportunity and growth, and more people will be interested in it with all the new equipment we get to have.”
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