that were set up on the course, or by light provided by headlamps, at both the beginning and end of their work days. “We didn’t work day and night. We only worked night and night because we worked in the dark,” Rackers says of the demanding work he and the State Tech crew carried out.
On practice round days at the beginning of the week, all the -
They returned to their hotel to nap, or to watch the Championship on television, often the closest they got to actually seeing the tournament and the play on the course they were charged with maintaining. A bus would return to their hotel in the afternoon at 4 p.m., and their work would continue back on the course until 9 p.m.
viewers as golfers walked past them. And at the end of the day, Rackers and the others joined in shov- eling mountains of mulch chips to cover the muddy mess left behind by hordes of Valhalla spectators.
“I spread so much mulch and that’s not a glamorous job, but I loved every second of it,” he says.
And that’s the thing about students and graduates of State Tech’s CT&G program. They’re not afraid of hard work, because the satis- I think I’ve done professionally, to be a part of. To be a part of it and to see our students excel,” Rackers said.
All of the State Tech Agronomy team members on #16 tee before the start of the PGA Championship.
But these volunteer groundskeepers had to follow a strict edict to never be seen or heard on the course.
They were to paint the picture of perfection for the golfers, the fans in attendance, and for the television audience, but just do it out-of-sight and out-of-mind.
make it so was not to be seen by the golfers, their fans or the folks watching on TV. Groundskeepers could be called during play, over the earpieces and radios that all wore, to remove wayward snakes from the course or to sweep sand from the putting greens. Rackers was tasked with removing stray grass clippings from
26 /// August 2024
With concentrations in golf course man- covers everything from parks and recre- ation to professional sports stadiums, and landscape design, construction and main- tenance, the CT&G concentration at State Tech boasts a 99% placement rate. And whether graduates end up working for a big league team or running their own lawn and landscape maintenance business, Rackers says they all get to share in some- thing special. “You have to have an eye for detail, you
have to get used to working long hours and you have to like working outside,” Rackers says of the ideal candidate for the CT&G program. “It’s grueling work sometimes, but the end result is something amazing.” As are the rewards for those graduates
who end up in the right spot at the right time. State Tech is proud to claim one of their graduates, part of the Kan- sas City Chiefs Arrowhead Stadium groundskeeping squad, has earned three Super Bowl rings, and another, a 2019 summer intern at Bos- ton’s Fenway Park, was given a World Series ring by the Red Sox. For Rackers, the satisfaction of helping groom the course at the PGA Championship was made extra special by being able to work alongside his State Tech students and former students, and see- ing them absorb the intricacies involved in successfully staging and carrying out a major event like the PGA Championship. “If you put it all together, there were a lot of pieces that made that one week work. That’s a resume-builder if you can say you worked a PGA Championship, and we watched our guys knock it out of the park.”
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
