Bowling Green High School is a high school in Missouri that aims to “empower all its students for life’s endless opportunities”. And they do so both in the classroom, but also on the field, offering their Bobcats a wide range of athletics opportunities: football, softball, baseball, track and field.
THE CHALLENGE
With just one grounds maintenance person within their athletic department, manual marking became a time-consuming and stressful job.
THE SOLUTION
So in Spring 2022, they decided to get a Turf Tank Robot, which completely transformed the way they used to paint their fields and greatly increased their efficiency.
Three things I like most about the turf tank is number one, how easy it is to use. Number two, how straight the lines are. And number three, just the professional look that the turf tank brings to all of our facilities.
Matt Chance, Activities Director
2-days effort turns into a 2-minutes process
Matt Chance, Activities Director at the high school, shares the background of their grounds maintenance operations and they challenges they faced in the past, when painting fields manually:
“We have one grounds maintenance person, within our athletic department that does all of our fields. And over the past few years, we’ve seen how much stress, we’ve put on that one individual to do all these fields.”
It was this laborious process that pushed the athletics department to look into more efficient solutions for their field painting needs and the Turf Tank robot proved to be a reliable assistant that significantly increased the efficiency of the line marking process.
While in the past it used to take their groundskeeper two days to paint a football field by hand, with the Turf Tank robot, he now only needs two minutes for setup and the robot paints the field by itself. What used to be a time-consuming job, can now be done in just a few minutes, at the touch of a button.
Due to the time pressure, they didn’t find the time in the past to paint their practice fields, as their attention was completely monopolized by the main fields. Now with the robot, they are happy they can also lay lines for the practice fields and give their athletes a proper place to train their skills.
In the past, we didn’t really ever even paint our practice fields. With one person, you just don’t have enough time to be able to do everything. So we took care of our main fields, and the practice fields a lot of times got the back seat. But with the robot we’re able to paint our practice fields. And they are done in less than 45 minutes.
Matt Chance, Activities Director
Not only are they proud now that they can paint all their fields, but that same individual is now free to focus his attention on other tasks, while the robot is painting the fields.
It just saves so much time for our individual who has to do all that, that he’s able to do other things while the Turf Tank is going on. He’s cleaning up and doing other things around the facility. He’s just much more efficient now that we have the Turf Tank.
Matt Chance, Activities Director
A professional look for their facilities
The high school is not only happy with the time they save, but also with the results the Turf Tank robot produces.
“When we got the demo, we started seeing how straight the lines were, how professional the look was, and just how much time and energy we save by going to the Turf Tank.”
Those who work in turf management know from experience how physically-demanding and stressful the process of painting lines can be. And, quite often, the results don’t match the expectations after putting so much time and effort into the process.
With the Turf Tank robot, Bowling Green High School is happy to know they will always get perfectly painted lines which give their facilities a more professional look. That is thanks to the robot’s GPS technology that ensures all the lines are in the same exact spot every time.
During their training, the Turf Tank support team mapped their entire facility in the software, so now whenever they want to repaint, all they have to do is select the desired fields, press start and the robot will paint with maximum precision.
The training was great. They came down and GPS-ed everything. They got it on our tablet. All we have to do now is push a button and say paint the main football field and it goes.
Matt Chance, Activities Director
Conclusion
Matt is excited with the new technology and the benefits it brought to their atheltic department. The robot has helped them save time and increase the efficiency of their field painting process, while giving their facilities a more professional look.
He has a lot of confidence in this technology and the benefits it can be bring to similar organizations:
“This is something that’s really going to catch on and there’s going to be many high schools in the state of Missouri to have these in the future.”
“I really think Turf Tank is the future!”