Tennessee Turfgrass Association – Member Spotlight on Adam Portenier, Head Groundskeeper, Nashville Soccer Club

TENNESSEE TURFGRASS: How long have you been working in the groundskeeping/turfgrass industry? Probably around 16, I’m starting to lose track. Nine years in the MLS. I had five years at Dallas, and now I’m on my fourth year with Nashville Soccer Club. Before that I was in baseball, with the Texas Rangers for a year. I worked four years at Haymarket Park at the University of Nebraska, their baseball field. Then three or four years at Hastings Public Schools, taking care of their sports fields. That’s how I got my start. How did you decide on a career in turfgrass management? I started off my first time working through college for the Hastings Public Schools, taking care of athletic fields. My first round of college I got two associate degrees. One in Architectural Design, one in Construction Management. I ended up taking a three-year break where I was architectural coordinator for a company called HTR. Their primary design was hospital/healthcare. I did work on a project that pushed me back into college. It was TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, the College World Series new stadium, which I was the project architectural coordinator on. Working on that project, seeing the field design and the build, sent me back to the University of Nebraska, where originally I was going to get my Bachelor’s degree in construction management. At that point I was just tired of being in my office. I was in a cubicle Monday through Friday besides site visits. When I left college and left that job at Hastings Schools, it was by far my favorite job I ever had, working outside, working with grass. At that time though, I didn’t know how to get into the profession. I had no idea there were turfgrass science degrees out there. When I went back to Nebraska, my first semester I was enrolled in construction management. One day I was just messing around online looking at what all they offer, and I came across their sports turf science program. I set up a meeting with the advisor for that and talked to her about 30 minutes. I think the last question I asked her was, ‘What jobs do I get after graduating with the degree?’ and she listed off some of her recent graduates working in baseball stadiums or golf, and that kind of sold me. If there was an outcome where I was able to work at a stadium full time, every day, that was something that I wanted to do. I switched majors that week from construction management to sports turf science. That’s when I got into baseball, Haymarket Park. I worked there as an intern, then worked my way to a seasonal assistant, second assistant, then graduated and moved to Dallas.<br /> <br /> Did the architectural design and construction management background prepare you for future jobs and this career? Yes, especially for the Nashville SC job where I was part of the buildout of the stadium. We just recently opened our training facility. So when I got here, Currey Ingram was already built, which is our Academy facility. But when I was here and started getting brought in on those construction meetings, they’d put blueprints in front of me and start explaining, ‘this is keys’ and stuff like that, I didn’t have to read all that. That and construction processes, it definitely prepared me for this job and building this stadium and field. Then moving on to Antioch where our first team training facility is, it prepared me for the whole design and build process, what to expect, the steps through design/development, construction documents, then buildout. What is unique about your facilities now? What makes them unique, but also what makes them tough to manage is right now we have three facilities in three different counties. We have our Academy facility in Brentwood where for the first three and a half years, that was where our first team trained. That was completed in October of 2019, and that’s when I start