Chain reaction

As I sit here and put out another job posting for an assistant superintendent position at Transit Valley Country Club in East Amherst, New York, I thought it’s time to recall the chain of events created by a decision made by a couple of people.

I entered a budget meeting at my previous club on Dec. 4, 2020, to meet with the general manager and greens chair to discuss the 2021 budget. The human resources professional walked in after we were situated. “Here we go,” I said to myself. No reason for dismissal, just “We want to go in a new direction.”

As I drove home, I called the wife to inform her of the situation. I thought about the whole COVID-19 year and how many times I asked God, “What am I doing here?” He knew I would not quit on my own, and I would just keep grinding through all the challenges I faced at the club. So, he made the decision for me.

The next day, I was getting to my honey-do list and was under my wife’s car changing the oil when the phone rang. A member from Transit Valley Country Club called me to see if I would be interested in the superintendent position and if I’d be available to work. I’ll never forget the first line: “Hello, Adam? You do not know me, but I am a member at Transit Valley CC and seeing if you are available to be our superintendent?”

Knowing that one of my friends was the current superintendent, I said, “You already have a superintendent.” After some back and forth, he said, “Are you available for work?” I responded, “As of 20 hours ago, yes.”

I got off the phone and called the current superintendent to let him know someone had contacted me. He was very gracious. We talked for a while about the situation and stayed connected throughout this process, which was not easy for either of us. On Feb. 1, 2021, I started as the new superintendent at Transit Valley Country Club.

Three years later, I see how one decision started a chain reaction in the region. I would say it has not been a seamless transition, more like a sports team at the grounds department. I have been fortunate to have great people on my crew for most of my career, but lately we have been moving people out as fast as we hired them. I have had nine assistants, with seven mechanics moving in or out in less than three years. It would be a long story behind each person’s journey, but I can tell it has been “next person up” at Transit Valley Country Club.

The list

The ex-superintendent at Transit Valley: Received an excellent job as a buyer/salesperson at a local seed company

Assistant: Superintendent at Fox Valley Club

Assistant: Assistant at Fox Valley Club

Assistant: Superintendent at Shelridge Country Club

Second assistant: First assistant at East Aurora Country Club

Second assistant: First assistant at Harvest Hill Golf Course

Assistant: Erie County Sheriff

Assistant: Superintendent-in-training at Byrncliff Golf Resort

Assistant: Dismissal.

Current first assistant: I hired him as my second assistant at my last club in 2020. He moved to Crag Burn Golf Club as a second assistant when I was no longer there, but then called me to come over to Transit Valley when my first assistant took a superintendent job.

Temporary hire: I also had a good friend/fellow superintendent who was dismissed from his club suddenly. I called to tell him he could work here during his transition to a new job if he would like. Knowing he was a great superintendent, I figured it would not be long before he was hired by another course. He collaborated with us for a brief time and is now a superintendent at another club in the area. He’s doing excellent.

Head mechanic: Moved to The Park Country Club of Buffalo.

Assistant mechanic: Retired.

New head mechanic: Hired and dismissed.

New assistant mechanic: Hired and dismissed.

Next mechanic: Came from Cloverbank Country Club for a season and then relocated to South Carolina with his family.

Current mechanic: Hired from another western New York golf course.

Current part-time mechanic: Retired engineer.

Assistant mechanic from my last club: Went to Shelridge Country Club as head mechanic for my other assistant.

My previous club hired someone from outside the area to become its new superintendent. He promoted two of my past employees to his assistants, so that was another positive. He also hired one of my past mechanics from another club to become his head mechanic.

All these changes I hope have been positive for all the people involved. If nothing else, it has filled many positions for western New York golf courses, and I have been blessed to be part of the relationships forged along the way. My current staff has a retired 35-year superintendent from a local country club who works seasonally for us and a 40-year retired assistant who works part-time. I also have two assistants-in-training who I hope will fill multiple roles for me or someone else in the future.

Someone once asked me, “Aren’t you concerned when hiring ex-superintendents and assistants that your job would be threatened?” I have always said, “Surround yourself with the best possible people and you will always succeed and so will they.” I have always tried to do the right thing and help people get to the next level of their career aspirations. I believe I have influenced many people along the way to be their best.

Reflecting on the separation from my last club in December 2020, it was surprising to me at the time. But it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me and, I hope, the people affected. It just reaffirms that when a door closes, God sometimes opens a better one.

As far as the last three years are concerned, it has been a wild ride. In our profession, you must be able to adapt and overcome and not be afraid of change. Sometimes this profession is not for the fainthearted, but I would not want to be doing anything else.

Adam Mis is the superintendent at Transit Valley Country Club in East Amherst, New York. This is his first Golf Course Industry contribution.

Tartan Talks 94

Gene Bates witnessed hippos ravaging greens in Africa during a site visit early in his career. He will never witness a more destructive course critter.

“They are like a bulldozer,” Bates says on the Tartan Talks podcast. “They are built low to the ground, they had these stubby tree-trunk legs, and they just put their doggone head in the soil and bulldozed their way through it. I’m not sure if they were looking for roots or grubs, I don’t know, but they do way more damage than an elk does.”

After a transient start to his golf course architecture career, Bates established an American-based firm in the late 1980s. The decision allowed him to work in tamer surroundings and focus on designing courses for the masses. He opened the podcast with some fabulous wildlife stories before discussing nearly four decades of work in the public sector.

A large part of Bates’ inspiration for designing golfer-friendly public courses ranging from Green Spring Golf Course in arid southwest Utah to Green Mountain National in forested Vermont stems from his wife, Faye, whose father, Ron Kirby, was a well-traveled golf course architect. Kirby is responsible for introducing Bates to the profession. “Whenever your wife makes a suggestion, you better listen,” Bates says. “She was in my ear about not making things too difficult and looking after young people and getting them interested in the sport by managing the playability of a golf course.”

Listen to the podcast on the Superintendent Radio Network page of popular distribution platforms.

No straightforward answer, yet subtle clues

Longtime superintendent Ron Furlong asks what he and his peers can do to attract more women to the industry. One honest conversation has altered his perspective.

There were a multitude of reasons I was interested in the “Ladies Leading Turf” presentation at the 2024 GCSAA Conference and Trade Show, but one nagging question attracted me to the event: How on earth can we draw more women into our industry?

I’m now in my 23rd year as superintendent at the same golf course. During all those years of posting open crew positions and hiring people to fill them, I’ve had a total of four women enter the shop in response to an ad. I hired all four.

I recently did the math and came up with a number in the neighborhood of 200 hires during my first 22 years on the job. Four out of 200 is 2 percent.

In fact, if I were to go back to every golf course I’ve worked at since entering the business in 1988 — six courses over 36 years — I can count on three hands (if I had three hands) the total number of women I have worked alongside on golf course maintenance crews.

Since becoming a superintendent and the sole person in charge of hiring, I’ve wondered if there was something I could or should be doing to attract more women to these open positions. I’ve been seeking some little piece of wisdom I was missing that could help me do more to spark some diversity at my own workplace.

There were three guest panelists at this year’s Ladies Leading Turf presentation at the GCSAA show — and Leah Withrow stole the show for me. I think it might be because a lot of us in the audience could relate to her story: She’s the head groundskeeper at a baseball stadium in Reno, Nevada. She also has an ability to honestly share the struggles and frustrations that she has dealt with being a woman in such a male-dominated industry. Her insight was authentic and direct.

Leah’s baseball field, Greater Nevada Field, home of the Triple-A Reno Aces, recently won the prestigious Professional Baseball Field of the Year award given by the Sports Field Management Association. No small feat, as this honor encompasses all professional baseball fields, including major-league fields.

Although I left the presentation in Phoenix feeling better about women making more of an impact on our industry, and thinking the future is only going to get more diverse, I still had no answer to my big question: What could I do as a superintendent to get more women to apply to our open positions when we post them? That question, specifically, was the one I had wanted answered. And I left feeling I did not have that answer.

“That’s the question everyone asks me: How do we get more women into the industry?” she says. “But to be honest, I don’t know where all the women are who don’t want to do it. But I do feel like there would be more women interested in getting into this field if it was marketed toward us. It’s just not.”

She continued this point by sharing just how hard it is for women not in the turf industry to see themselves in it.

“When I started researching this as a possible field I wanted to go into and make a career out of, it was all men in the magazines and books I looked up. When I went to college, it was all men in the classrooms. It was all men in the textbooks. When I started working in the field, it was all men I was working with.

“Even with ads, it was all men in the research ads, the fertilizer ads, the irrigation ads. And I get it. Companies are generally targeting their ads at the people who use their products. And for the most part those customers are men. But I think it helps to see companies using women more now. Just so that we can see somebody doing it who we can relate to.”

When I asked Leah if she had any advice for what I could personally do to facilitate more women coming through my door to answer a job posting, she again didn’t have a silver bullet answer. Which makes sense. If we knew exactly how to fix the lack of diversity in our industry, I’m pretty sure many of us would have done that by now. But it’s not simple. It’s complicated and it’s layered.

But then she said something that, for me at any rate, was a game-changer. I felt that she did leave me with something to consider for my own situation.

Leah talked about culture, and what our culture perhaps looks like to a woman interested in working on a golf course. That culture resides in the maintenance shop itself and within the most-likely-male-dominated crews we oversee.

“I’ve only been around a handful of golf maintenance crew,” she says, “but I have noticed some are better than others. Some of the cultures are just generally geared more toward keeping women out of the shop. You kind of feel that energy. You sense that energy. When guys are standoffish and not accepting, that doesn’t go unnoticed.”

She told me an honest story about what this looked like to her.

“I remember getting my uniform once when I started a job, and our gameday polo we were required to wear, the only shirt they had for me was a men’s medium,” she says. “I wear a women’s extra small, so that was extremely large for me. Not only do I already stand out, now I’m wearing a shirt that’s five sizes too big. Now I really stand out. I don’t feel comfortable. I’m trying to tie and tuck so it’s not just falling out of everything. I’m trying to do my job. I mean it can come down to something simple like that, or just having a locker room that I can go into and feel comfortable in. It takes such little effort on people’s part and a lot of men just don’t consider or realize the impact it has on a woman.

“I think the best thing you can do is making sure you run a shop that has a culture that’s embracing of a woman coming in and not making her feel even more weird in the situation than she probably does already.”

Changing the culture. This made so much sense. I don’t know that I ever considered our shop and the culture of our shop before in regard to how it must look to a woman.

But I certainly will now.

Ron Furlong is the golf course superintendent at Avalon Golf Club in Washington and a frequent Golf Course Industry contributor.

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