Episode 149: Matt Leis Returns

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Back in September 2021, we interviewed Matt Leis, and in Episode 149 we’re catching up with him again to hear about his transition from the golf course to sports fields. Matt is now the Manager of Fleet & Irrigation at the Papago Baseball Complex for the San Francisco Giants Baseball Club in Phoenix, AZ. The 40-acre complex is home to player development and Minor League operations, featuring six full fields, auxiliary surfaces, and a 15,000 sq. ft. facility. As the solo technician in the shop, Matt oversees a Toro fleet, preventive maintenance, and the RainBird irrigation and pump systems while supporting the Field Operations team. We dive into the unique challenges of sports fields—precision grading, grooming artificial turf, finding cleats in mowers—and how the players’ calendar drives cultural practices. Matt also shares how refereeing college football fits into his busy schedule, along with his professional growth through the GCSAA EMCP and CTEM programs and the Toro Grounds Leadership Academy.

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Episode Transcript

Trent Manning (00:56):
Welcome to the reel turf techs podcast for the
technician that wants to getreel follow along.
As we talk to industryprofessionals and address hot
topics that we all face alongthe way we'll learn tips and
tricks.
I'm your host, Trent.
Manning let's have some thisepisode are real turf techs on

(01:18):
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presented by Foley county astrong supporter of equipment
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everywhere Foley county offers aproven solution for above and
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(01:38):
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distributor visit www dot FoleyC o.com Foley Ready for play

Trent Manning, CTEM (01:57):
welcome Matt to the Realtor Turf Text
podcast.
Thank you for coming on.

Matt Leis (02:02):
I appreciate it, Trent.

Trent Manning, CTEM (02:03):
Yeah.
Welcome back.
So we don't have too many returnvisitors, but your story is a
little bit different.
So you started at a golf courseand now you're at Sports Fields.
Right.

Matt Leis (02:18):
I that is correct.
Now with the San FranciscoGiants at our player development
facility based still down herein Phoenix, Arizona.

Trent Manning, CTEM (02:25):
Okay, awesome.
Yeah, I can't wait to hear moreabout that.
But before we get into that,let's remind the listeners how
you got into the turf industry.

Matt Leis (02:38):
Well back this would've been 2018.
I had left the business aviationindustry when I was down here in
Phoenix and wanted to get backinto more the grounds game.
I did that back in college formy local parks and rec
department.
So at the time, my wife and Ilived on the golf course, the
Western Kierland Golf Club inNorth Scottsdale.
I just started off as agreenskeeper.

(02:58):
And then after a few months ofthat, the head mechanic at the
time saw I had a mechanicalinkling for, for what he was
doing.
He invited me in to try out theshop and it didn't take very
long.
And then I was like, Ooh, thisis kind of what I want to go.
And then, so I went in as anassistant in the shop, and then
it was about six months laterafter that he decided to leave.

(03:21):
I put together my thoughts andhow I wanted to run the shop and
go from there and was offered onan interim basis and then got
the role full time.
And so from there I was then,not only did I do stuff for our
golf course, but we were part ofTru Golf.
And then there was someopportunity where I assisted
some other properties both herein Arizona and a couple across

(03:43):
the country.
Kind of some triage work, somereopening of a clubs post
pandemic that were under the Truumbrella now.
And, but from there you know, Ireally was thankful for my time.
I had with Tru and Anna,Carolyn, I had a great
superintendent that I workedfor.
But it was just reaching a timewhere.
I wasn't directly looking for achange, but then I had a former

(04:07):
assistant superintendent Iworked with who then reached out
about a potential opportunityhere with the Giants.
And so, went and checked thatout.
Kind of vetted that, had someconversations then with not only
my superintendent in seen maybewhere things could lead with
them long term, but I felt likethis was the right time.
You know, we, they opened thisfacility in February of 2022.

(04:31):
I got here in October of 2022.
So just after construction andeverything was totally wrapped
up.
So, then that's how I landedhere.
And then got to open up to kindof do a whole new world.
Very similar.
There's some differencesobviously, but from my side of
things the role I took wasmanager of Fleet and Irrigation.
That's my technical title withthe club.

(04:53):
And we're a 40 acre facilityhere in Phoenix for those
familiar with the Phoenix Metroarea.
It's a heavy and spring trainingbaseball.
So half the clubs are down here,obviously the other half are in
Florida.
And so they the Giants they playtheir major league games for
spring training at ScottsdaleStadium and a partnership with

(05:14):
the City of Scottsdale, andthey've done that for a very
long time.
And besides that, then they usedto be in a partnership with the
city for their playerdevelopment facility, which is
what we are.
So the Giants made a decisionwhere they took over a land
lease with the city of Phoenix.
There was a previous facility onthis site, but they knocked
everything down completely rebirebuild it.

(05:36):
So that's where we land now.
We have a gorgeous 15,000 squarefoot maintenance facility.
We work out of, we're a total,as I said earlier, 40 acres.
We have six full fields.
We have a half field.
We have an indoor infield andhitting area kind of what we
call an agility field forstrength and conditioning.
So it's a unique property to bea part of.
And we stay busy all year longeven when baseball season isn't

(05:58):
going.

Trent Manning, CTEM (05:59):
How many people do you have staff there?

Matt Leis (06:03):
So we have on our team a total of 13 in field
operations.
So if we kind of break it downin the golf world to understand
it a little bit better, we haveour senior manager of field
operations he'd be like ourdirector of agronomy.
And then we have our he's sitecoordinator.
I can't remember what Brad'stechnical title is.
That's who I used to work withat the golf course.

(06:24):
He'd be like our golf coursesuperintendent.
And then we have two assistantswe call field coordinators and
there's teams of four underneaththem.
And we do have a full-timehorticulturist on staff as well.
That takes care of all ourlandscape areas.

Trent Manning, CTEM (06:36):
Oh, nice.
That's awesome.
Super cool.
And, but your primarily focus ison the equipment and the
irrigation system.

Matt Leis (06:46):
Yeah, mainly the system itself, not I'm not going
out and hand watering regularly.
I'm not doing head adjustmentsand replacements.
Our staff in general is alltrained on that and they take
care of those things.
More managing the preventativemaintenance of our pump system.
Also then our, all of oursoftware, we are a rainbird
system that we have here.
So that was a learning curve forme.

(07:06):
I had experience with Art Torosystem at the golf course
previously but mainly doing allof our preventative maintenance
items.
And, definitely just take takein every year we go through a
full audit of all theinformation in the software
program.
We also then, you know,exercising valves, things things
of that nature that kind of goby the wayside regularly.

(07:29):
I've actually just incorporatedall of that into my equipment,
preventative maintenance

Trent Manning, CTEM (07:33):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Matt Leis (07:34):
And so I use my turf for it as well, that Toro
product that they have.
So it's all in there so it canremind us and go from there.
And so we haven't had,thankfully too many snafus.
There's, we've had a couplepump, a little pump emergencies,
nothing too crazy being a newersite that we are.
But mainly still focused on theequipment side.

(07:54):
And we have a pretty robustfleet for the size of what we
have.
So it's been it still keeps mebusy being solo in the shop
right now.

Trent Manning, CTEM (08:02):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Matt Leis (08:03):
and, but it's the right amount.
At the same time, we wouldn'tneed somebody else assisting in
this role in its currentcapacity.
But I still get out.
I operate a lot to I try toalways get out on a piece of
equipment once a week, if it'smowing, if it's dragging, if
it's anything like that.
But that's that, that's mainlymy kind of big picture on what I

(08:25):
do here.
And we just you know, we kind ofkeep on rolling from there.
We're based off of baseballactivity.
That's what it is what the teamneeds.
Those are our end user.
So there's many days where wereally don't know what we're
gonna get coming in until we geta schedule of what they require
for the day.
And so with that it, I can jumpin and assist'cause I have the
bandwidth a lot of the times tooif they get pinched where we

(08:47):
have a lot going on in one area,they just need somebody to get
out and mow a surface.
Before we would start, forexample then I would end up
assisting with that.

Trent Manning, CTEM (08:55):
Gotcha.
Okay.
Yeah.
No, that's super cool.
And we're definitely gonna diginto that a little deeper, but
before we do, what's yourfavorite tool?
Is it still the same?

Matt Leis (09:06):
I think it's different.
I'm trying to, when I went back,I think I said the shim, not the
shim, but the feeler gauge for,

Trent Manning, CTEM (09:13):
Okay.
Real?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Matt Leis (09:15):
for real, the bed knife.
And that still is, I a big, hugebeliever in that.
And for those looking onlineover my shoulder, when I, early
on when I got here, I got thisDayton lift cart and it's a 880
pound capacity lift cart.
Even fortunately, I have a golflift.
I have also golf lifts table aswell.
And even when you sink thatthing all the way down to the

(09:35):
ground, if you're picking up a,you know, a real master 3,132
inch cutting unit onto thatlittle, you know, we're talking
only six inches, but.
There's still enough littletorquing and moving when, if
you're not doing it right, youcan hurt yourself.
And so one thing I'd asked forthat and the club was a no
brainer to them.
And so setting, you know,getting, cutting units from the

(09:58):
ground up into the air andactually, you know, very, I can
take, use that and I can carry acutting unit directly from the
table all the way in and set itright in the grinder, just like
how Foley has their electricbased lift that they have.
And I know SIP and others havethat as well.
This is just, it's a foot littlefoot pump pedal you know,
hydraulic cylinder.

(10:18):
It's kind of my second hand.
I've used it.
I'm pulling transmissions outtaworkman's.
I've used it lifting heavycomponents off of our Procore 8
64 recently.
It's just been kind of my extrahand if I can't holler and get
somebody to help me.
And it's kept me safe for sure.
So

Trent Manning, CTEM (10:33):
oh, yeah.

Matt Leis (10:34):
gone up on my list for sure.

Trent Manning, CTEM (10:36):
What I just was telling you,'cause we were
talking about it before westarted recording here, but my
good friend Howard Horn, thathe's a, the em at Bear's best
down the road from me.
He just got that very hoist thatyou got back there and he said
it doesn't talk back and it'snever late for work.

(10:57):
I mean, and it's kind of thesame thing.
He's only had it for about aweek, but he is like, man, this
is the best investment I've evermade.
I use this, you know, for allkind of stuff.

Matt Leis (11:07):
And the only thing I did to modify it is I drilled a
couple holes in the forks of itso I could stick some pins in
there, so cutting units wouldn'troll off of it.

Trent Manning, CTEM (11:14):
Okay.
Yeah.

Matt Leis (11:15):
besides that, it's, it was ready to go right away
and pretty sure we ordered itjust through Grainger and showed
up like a couple days later.
And things have been great.

Trent Manning, CTEM (11:23):
Yeah.
That's awesome.
That's good stuff.
Well, how do you relax or findyour balance?

Matt Leis (11:31):
Well, we talked about it last time I was on, but I
still do this advocation calledsports Officiating Referee.
So I referee college footballnow at the division one FCS
level, the former AA level,which I was kind of breaking
into that the last time we hadwe had spoken and still doing
that.
It's been treating me very well.
But you know, that was also onething looking at when I made my

(11:54):
job change.
It actually the calendarsmirrored up very well.
'Cause baseball season isstarting to wind down as
football season is starting totake off.
So my requirements with traveland things for that I'm
supported very highly here fromthe club and my direct manager
and everything.
And it's always a fun topic ofconversation for guys that when

(12:15):
I get back from a footballweekend, wanting to hear maybe
some stories from my game or myreaction to certain things that
might happen across the countryand football land as well.
So, but it's still a very goodthing for me.
It keeps me very busy all yearlong with that.
Because, you know, right now wewere, we're in off season mode
still for football, but we'regonna blink in two weeks.

(12:36):
We're gonna be going topractices and scrimmages, and
then it's gonna be Labor Dayweekend.
And then suddenly 13 weeks aregonna go by and we're gonna
blink and the season's gonna bedone and we're gonna be in the
postseason.
So it all happens very fast andit's a busy time of year, but
it's still an outlet for me.
All my best friends areofficials.
I do a little bit of basketballstill, just some high school
stuff during the week, but themain focus still is football.

(12:59):
With that,

Trent Manning, CTEM (13:00):
Yeah.
That's awesome.
That's so cool.
That's gotta be fun.
I lost my train of thought, butthat's okay.
Yeah.

Matt Leis (13:07):
I'm gonna hit while you're thinking.
I'm gonna hit this button againand give us another 30 minutes.

Trent Manning, CTEM (13:12):
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
What's going off there?

Matt Leis (13:14):
The my lights are on automatic timers, but with
motion sensors, but that I'msitting here, it's after 30
minutes they turn off and I'dbeen sitting for a bit, probably
before I got on here.

Trent Manning, CTEM (13:25):
Gotcha.
Well, tell me some differencesor some similarities in between
golf and sports fieldmanagement.

Matt Leis (13:35):
Well, there's a lot of walking into it.
You know, it's still grass, it'sstill dirt.
It's those kinds of things.
But the biggest difference I.
I saw was traffic.
Traffic is such a differentanimal when it comes to sports
fields.
And I've not only seen this atour facility, but other sports
fields and other people Idiscussed this with across the

(13:58):
industry as well.
But managing traffic is verydifficult'cause athletes are
very routine coaches are veryroutine, so they kind of want to
do the same things in the sameplaces over and over again.
We have the ability at ourfacility where we can move them
from field to field and rotateit.
And our coaching staff is verygood where they accommodate us

(14:19):
when we make those kinds ofrequests.
And so, but you still, like onour main game field, we have
here we have struggles,especially in transition, coming
outta oversee back into Bermudatime are areas that struggle the
most, are not only trafficrelated to.
Participants, but then we have alot of self-induced traffic from

(14:42):
us as well.
'cause our areas where you mowand turn and do other things
like that is just thefootprint's so much smaller.
So you have to be very diligentabout it.
But that's the bigger thing.
cause we talk about traffic ongreens all the time, right.
That's why we put so much effortinto maintaining greens and all
the cultural practices that wedo, and then coming over here

(15:05):
into, on the sports side ofthings, and especially baseball,
that same amount of effort andlabor and time that goes into a
green well.
Our guys put into that in theinfield dirt and we call'em
infield skins.
That's the common term

Trent Manning, CTEM (15:21):
Proper name.

Matt Leis (15:22):
Yep.
And like the amount of, we havefull water management plans for
what we gotta do and keepingcertain amounts of moisture in
it.
We do all of our grading inhouse here.
We have a seven foot grading boxand we also have a BI Z 23
force, which is a b i's kind ofmulti-tool, very similar to

(15:43):
Toro's Field Pro 60 40 thatthat's on the market currently.
And.
It has all those multiattachments to stand on zero
turn style unit.
So we have a grade box for that.
So we'll rough grade with ourbig seven foot box pulling on a
Toro outcross with a full dualpull laser setup.
And then we'll take that a BIout afterwards and kind of do a

(16:04):
finish grade down to about a10th of an inch.
Accuracy is what we shoot for.

Trent Manning, CTEM (16:09):
Wow,

Matt Leis (16:10):
it with a, we do it with a conical laser set that in
the middle of the mound just fordrainage purposes.
And

Trent Manning, CTEM (16:17):
What kind of percentage?

Matt Leis (16:19):
It, well, there was a set percentage, I don't remember
it off the top of my head,

Trent Manning, CTEM (16:23):
okay.
I was just curious.

Matt Leis (16:25):
What happened over time as we continue to top dress
the turf?
Well then that ends up.
You know, obviously we'reraising the profile of of the
soil for the turf, and then alsoif we might've went heavy on the
outfield and not as heavy on theinfield.
Like, so we kind of every yearare guesstimating it.
But it's very common in thesports field world after 4, 5, 6

(16:46):
years of a surface, especiallyif you're maintaining that high
university or college level orprofessional level, it's pretty
common.
You strip everything down, youregrade everything all over
again, and then you start fromscratch.
But that's obviously a big bigexpense that sometimes it's hard
to swallow, but if it's usuallypart of the general capital

(17:08):
improvement planning with that.
But, so, but our, it'sinteresting, our conical laser,
it's just a little dial that'son that's setting the
percentage.
So, usually our boss he goes outand he's the one who sets it
every time and he's just makinglittle tiny different
adjustments on it.
We're getting the laser receiverout there and we're kind of
trying to get it as close as wecan.

(17:29):
But that, that's been a newthing for me.
I never had done any precisiongrading stuff before.
So that's been that's been coolto be a part of.
And that's kind of an annualthing, and we might do a
mid-season one on higher usefields as well.
But you know, that's the bigthing, just going back, like the
effort we put into edging dirtyou know, grooming, dirt you

(17:51):
know, heavy dragging dirt andthen trying to keep that surface
as smooth as possible.
And that's a huge huge part ofit.
And maintaining the edges andlips and everything like that is
just because we're, our numberone goal for what we're doing in
a field operations department istrying to provide the safest
plane surface.
For our athletes because they'rebig investments and especially

(18:14):
at our level where where we'recurrently at and what we host
those are the beginning of thoseprospect's career.
And so if something detrimentalwould happen early on, it can
not only be a negative for theplayer, but then for us as an
organization.

Trent Manning, CTEM (18:31):
Oh

Matt Leis (18:31):
that's why we take that aspect of it very
seriously.
But you know, from a turfstandpoint, you know, I went
from a golf property that had140 irrigated acres of turf, 13.
So it there's a lot less demandfrom that point.
And so that also has changedtoo, where, like a riding mower,

(18:52):
for example, like we primarilyuse real master 31 hundreds.
But a fairway mower that wewould use at a golf course would
put 6, 7, 800 hours annually onitself.
Here we're lucky if we get to300 hours annually, A riding
unit.
But and same with same with ourwalk behinds.
We use greens master 16 hundredsfor our infield.
Those don't, you know, they'renot seeing the square footage

(19:15):
that you're seeing doing agreens mow route every single
time.

Trent Manning, CTEM (19:18):
Right, right, right.

Matt Leis (19:18):
So, so from that aspect there's some benefits of
that.
Obviously, if your equipmentisn't getting hammered away on
how many hours you're putting onit it, it can, it's longevity
can be a lot longer.
And then maintaining things.
I've actually adjusted most ofthe recommended preventative
maintenance schedules down inhours, just because I was

(19:39):
finding like a workman,'cause weuse workmans as our primary
transport and utility vehicle.
I wasn't seeing one of thoselike it.
Six, seven months, I would,nothing was even popping up to
come check anything in the shopbecause,

Trent Manning, CTEM (19:53):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Matt Leis (19:54):
our guys are driving, you know, they're not driving
very far, and then they'returning'em off because they're
working on a field, they're notrunning the whole time.
So, you know, that's been adifference of shortening up the
intervals for a lot of things,just mainly.
So I forced myself to be able toget things on the lift take a
little deeper look at stuff.

(20:14):
And so it's allowed us to avoidissues from that point.
But the you know, but the turfthe turf activities are similar
to what we do on a, we do on agolf course.
And our whole facility isactually USGA specs for the soil
profile.

Trent Manning, CTEM (20:30):
Okay.

Matt Leis (20:30):
So that's very unique.
We have some common areas thatare kind of, push up just sand
capped areas, but so that's alsobeen we kind of are maintaining
our soils similar to what wewould do on a green, but what
we're mowing at and ourintervals on aeration and other
things like that are verysimilar to what we do on a
fairway at a golf course.

Trent Manning, CTEM (20:51):
So, yeah.
Do you, is it hard with theplayer's schedule working in
cultural practices?

Matt Leis (21:00):
Not really, because actually that's a good thing to
explain, just like our generalcalendar of kind of how our
facility operates.
So if we start in springtraining, that's the heavy duty
time.
We got about 40 to 45 days of.
Go time.
And that's during that time.
Our staff and including myself,we pretty much work every single
day.

(21:20):
They're not extremely long days.
We're not talking 12, 13 hourdays.
They're just pretty normal days.
But we're here all the time.
So once we get out of that that45 day window and teams start to
go report to the affiliate, so,you know, aaa, high, low, single
what's left is at our facility.
Then we go into extended springtraining, they call it.

(21:41):
And so the minor league playersthat are left we go through a
little bit of a mini season to,that's in April.
And then from there, we startwhat now is called the Arizona
Complex League.
Historically it was referred toas Rookie Ball, and that starts
in May.
And that runs till about, wehave a few more weeks, about to
the end of July, first week inAugust.

(22:01):
But, so during that time we onlyreally have one team on site.
So that allows us, is where wedid our cultural practice in
that may through kind of end ofJuly window and we just will,
bebop team will bebop what fieldis available around, which is
very convenient.
And another thing we've done toois we've actually not over-seed
a couple of our surfaces aswell.

(22:24):
So then that's allowed us tokind of force activity as the
Bermuda wakes up to thosesurfaces, we can focus on some
mechanical practices, culturalpractices for transition on
those other surfaces.
Gives us some of thatflexibility.
And then obviously as we getinto the fall.
The baseball season's wrappingup in general, but as the

(22:44):
affiliate teams finish theirseasons, those players report
back to our facility.
They continue to work out.
And also in that time, draftee,I think the draft was last
weekend from when we're talkingnow, draft ease will report and
there's kind of a developmentleague that goes on in the fall.
Not many games, but thathappens.
And then kind of end of Octoberas the World Series ends, then

(23:07):
activity here really dives off.
There's still some guys who aregonna be coming in and doing
some medical rehab things.
Some voluntary workouts, but no,the months of November and
December are very slow here justfrom a player activity
standpoint.
And then once we get intoJanuary, we'll have some
development camps.
We'll have strength andconditioning camps, and then we

(23:28):
blink.
Pitchers and catchers arereporting and we're back into
spring training from thereagain.
So that's our typical calendar.
But we fit those culturalpractices in pretty easily.
We're fortunate with that, just'cause we have the space.
Our whole thing is if we don'thave to do anything in that 45
day spring training window andwe're pretty much just making
sure the grass is cut, thefields are ready, that's our

(23:49):
main focus.
Then we can really hit all thatother stuff at other times.
But going back to the not overs,seeding a couple surfaces that
we kind of had that little bitof a brainchild, if you want to
call it.
'cause we had one of our fieldsthat we only got used during
that 45 day period.
So we're like, we think it couldsurvive if we just didn't

(24:11):
oversee it.
We paint and pigment it for thecolor aspect and then it would
transition obviously.
A hundred percent very quickly.

Trent Manning, CTEM (24:20):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Matt Leis (24:20):
we tried that one year, we did another service
this past year.
We, and the organization hasresponded very well to it.
They've been very happy with theresult.
And so we're gonna keep lookingat that and how we can maybe
expand that.
'cause we really want justsimilar to the golf course, we
want green all year long.
We want the ability for recoveryall year long.
But with the transition and whenit happens, that's the heart of

(24:43):
this regular season forbaseball.
So then with that, then we runinto some of that compaction
issue, that traffic issue.
And so suddenly you transitionand.
There's not a lot of turf leftin certain areas, and that's not
a good look.
So we we continue to try toadapt and learn what, especially
this facility is giving us everyyear.

(25:04):
And, you know, obviously a lotof weather dependent and
everything like that, but, youknow, we I'm just thinking of
other kind of similarities anddifferences as we I, I deal with
more debris in cutting unitshere than I did at the golf
course.

Trent Manning, CTEM (25:20):
Wow.
Okay.

Matt Leis (25:21):
little metal spikes off of baseball cleats are not
my friend.

Trent Manning, CTEM (25:25):
Uhhuh.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Matt Leis (25:27):
And they're just tough enough that they will do
some good damage.
And it's that, that's been thekind of, my big enemy when it
comes to, obviously, security inour job and position, that's why
we're here.
But that, that's been a commonthing where we'll probably go I
think at least once a monthwe'll find one.

Trent Manning, CTEM (25:47):
Oh wow.

Matt Leis (25:48):
it's and it usually, it's never that drastic.
It's a quick touchup grind andwe're back out and going again.
But like this past week we, wehad one where it caught one
mower.
We searched for it, we couldn'tfind it.
Couple days later.
Then when we were re mowing itagain, it caught another one.
So, but thankfully we found iton the second go.

(26:09):
But we, but outside, out,outside of that it's just are,
the schedule is so based on whatthe teams need.
But we're also very flexible wiwith us.
And actually one thing goingfrom you know, typical golf
course schedule, you're startingat 5:00 AM in the summer months
and you're done early in theday, things like that.

(26:30):
Well, with we play night gamesfor our team that we host here.
So our crew doesn't come inuntil 10:00 AM.
So I match that.
I come in around the same timeand so working that, having the
morning at home is, wasdifferent and it was good to get
used to.
You're able to knock out somestuff which is convenient in the
mornings and especially heredown in the Phoenix area.

(26:52):
Obviously we get very hot in thesummer months.
We had a one 20 day last week.

Trent Manning, CTEM (26:57):
Wow.

Matt Leis (26:58):
But getting getting stuff done in the morning at my
house, even just mowing the lawnor getting in the pool, going
get in the pool cleaned up orwhatever it would happen to be.
It's nice having that in themorning.
And then and I'm very fortunate.
I have a fully climatecontrolled shop here.
That, so I kind of live life at75 degrees, 365.
So it works out too.

(27:19):
'cause even when it's obviouslyvery hot outside I can still get
things done in here no problem.
Which is a huge thing.
And it's obviously a very hugebenefit.
I'm very thankful that somebodyput that in the construction

Trent Manning, CTEM (27:33):
Yeah, for sure.

Matt Leis (27:34):
But we but yeah, outside of that, it's similar
and different, but like I saidearlier, the traffic is the big
thing that that I've seen whereit just, so we do more spot
verification.
That's the biggest difference.
We do a lot of needle timing.
We do, we pull cores more oftenon our heavier traffic areas.
And so it's just kind of morecontinuing doing that on a

(27:54):
continuing basis versus just,you know, big major events at
one time.
And that's more what we focus onis we do cultural practices more
often, just less aggressive.
Where when you're at the golfcourse, we would have our five
day closure and we would, you'dgo to town on everything.
We're here, we kind of justthroughout the year, just kind

(28:16):
of pick pick at things to stillget to the same end result.
But it's just more on thatlittle bit more often kind of
schedule.

Trent Manning, CTEM (28:25):
Right, right, right, right.
So I did spend four yearsbuilding sports fields before I
ended up back at the golfcourse.
And when you were talking aboutdialing in the cone laser yeah.
With that little knob andthere's no graduations really.
Yeah.
And yeah, just tweak it a littlebit, tweak it a little bit so I

(28:48):
know exactly what you're talkingabout.
That was cool to think back on.
And the guy I worked for, hesaid The worst thing you can do
for the grass on a sports fieldis paint a line.
And you're talking about trafficbecause if there's a line there,
that's where the coaches linethe players up.
You know, this is where we'regonna do this drill.

(29:09):
This is the worst thing youcould do.
And then we used to fight it agood bit'cause we also
maintained fields at the timewith the marching band.
They would get out there withall the lines on the field and
march up and down the lines.
Yeah.
So anyway stuff that we don'treally think about, you know, on
a golf course.

(29:30):
'cause we don't have many linesout there.

Matt Leis (29:33):
Yeah.
And the, actually now one thingI thought of difference wise is
we do have one artificialsurface here.

Trent Manning, CTEM (29:40):
Okay.

Matt Leis (29:40):
so, so one of our full fields is a, is an
artificial artificial field andit's full artificial outside of
the pitching mound.
So that's been a learning curveas well, because if you really
do artificial turf, right,there's a lot of labor that's
involved in it.

Trent Manning, CTEM (29:56):
Oh yeah, for

Matt Leis (29:56):
And that's kinda lost on people sometimes.
And our artificial surfacedoesn't get heavily trafficked,
like say a high school would orpublic parks would.
But.
It's still like weekly groomingmore monthly heavy grooming.
And then we do have a Verti top1800 made by Red Dum, which
that's one of those machinesthat has the rakes, has the

(30:19):
brush, a vacuum.
It pulls all those infill up,sifts through it, gets the trash
out of it, lays it all backdown.
And two, like you gotta kind ofwater it too to get the surface
settled back in.
So we have these big watercannons that are set up on that
field.
They're pretty impressive.
They shoot like 140 feet.

Trent Manning, CTEM (30:39):
That is

Matt Leis (30:39):
and so, but like, yeah, that, that's been a
learning curve as well.
Something I would've not evenlike considered at first.
You just kind of think it'sthere, but if you want to do it
right, there's a lot that goesinto it.

Trent Manning, CTEM (30:52):
Well, I remember hearing about people
having to spray the field forlike staph infections and, you
know, different stuff like thatyou can get from the synthetic
field because there's noorganisms in there eating the
bad stuff.

Matt Leis (31:11):
Yeah.
And we haven't had we havetesting done on our surface
every single year.
And that is actually one thingthey test for is situations like
that.
But yeah, there's especiallylike I had said at, when you're
talking about school districtsand public parks and all that,
there's all, there's so muchmore mitigation things you gotta
do than you'd even consider.

Trent Manning, CTEM (31:33):
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
So, back to the oversee, when doy'all do that practice?

Matt Leis (31:39):
Si similar when we did at the golf course, kind of
in that October window when Iwas at my previous golf course
was a 27 hole property.
So our oversea window was prettyspread out.
But we get the whole facilitydone in during a week.
We do kind of a surface a daykind of, kind of situation.
And then that's one reason wehave the artificial field is so

(32:00):
there is an available surfacefor players to work out on and
to get some training done on.
And, you know, similar groins,very similar.
All that's very similar to whenit was at the, when we were at
the golf course here in the inthe Phoenix area.
But we but like I said earlier,now that we've taken.
And two additional surfaces.

(32:21):
We haven't over-seed, so we havehalf the site available for
players to use.
So we've actually seen an uptickin voluntary workouts during
that time because guys canactually work out on grass

Trent Manning, CTEM (32:31):
Oh, nice.

Matt Leis (32:32):
it over the artificial.
So that's that's been a bigthing in the past past year that
with oversee that we've seen hasbeen a positive with going that
route of overseeing lesssurfaces.

Trent Manning, CTEM (32:43):
I don't, have you got any pushback, I
guess from.
Like the city of Phoenix andoverseeing and water use and all
those things.

Matt Leis (32:55):
You know, that's a, you know, interesting topic when
it comes across the whole stateof Arizona.
I'm not, I will preface thiswith, I'm no expert in this.
This is just kind of myobservation and what I've heard.
The Arizona Department of WaterResources has made a little bit
of a push and trying to keepgolf and sports fields and
municipalities more accountablefor their water use and things

(33:20):
that need to be reported.
And that's for us.
We are connected just to citywater for our irrigation.
So we're not as scrutinizedbecause the city has full
documentation on what we'reusing.
They more are focusing on, youknow, facilities that have their
own wells and also facilitiesthat pull out of, directly out
of the canal for Central Arizonaproject and the Arizona Canal as

(33:42):
well.
And so there, that has, that wasa big hub of a couple years ago.
But it has kind of, theconversation is not as hot as it
was a few years ago.
We've had some good winters thepast couple winters.
So reservoirs are a lot morefull in the state of Arizona.
So the topic is not as widelydiscussed as it was for a while.

Trent Manning, CTEM (34:04):
Okay.
Yeah I know that was hot topicthere for a while, so I was just
curious.
Yeah.
The, what was happening now I,well, tell us about, you're
still pursuing your EMCP and CEMcertification.

Matt Leis (34:21):
I am, and that's when I first made the transition I
maintained my GCs a membershipthat first year.
'cause I had some time left onit, and I just kind of let it
peter out.
I, you know, I was, had somethings I was focused on here.
And then I had looked into,there is a sports field you
know, the SFMA, sports FieldManagement Association very

(34:41):
similar to G-C-S-A-A, but justfor the sports fielding ground
side of things.
They offer certification similarto superintendent
certifications, but they'reobviously, they have nothing
based directly for equipment.
And that's actually one thingquick to discuss is that my role
being directly affiliated with aorganization is.

(35:04):
Kind of unique because a lot ofthe clubs across Major League
Baseball, for example, theypartner with a municipality and
they rent or lease facilitiesfor spring training and for
their player developmentfacilities.
So they might somebody who wouldbe either in a head equipment
manager role or a head mechanicrole, they would more than
likely be a city employee andnot only overseeing equipment

(35:26):
for sports fields, but thenprobably for all of the parks
and recreation department.
Or they'd be a subset of thestreet department that's focused
on the parks and rec or, sosomething similar to that.
But, so that kind of got methinking.
I still wanna, wanted to pursuethat.
I, you know, you never knowwhere the road takes you.
You might end up back, I mightend up back in golf someday

(35:47):
whatever it happened to be.
So I had reached out to GCSA andI just inquired like, oh, can I.
Still be a member.
I just started with that and youknow, looking through the
criteria, oh yeah, I could stillbe an equipment manager member.
I still met the criteria of myrole and the duties I had.
So I continued with that.
And then I had inquired aboutthe CMP and then cem if I could

(36:10):
do that.
And they're like.
Yeah, I don't see why youcouldn't.
And that's actually stated inthe criteria is that if your
role is still similar in natureyou can still go and pursue
that.
So, currently in the process oftrying to do my CMPs, I want
those done by the end of 2025.
With football season it's gonnaget a little busy, but then

(36:31):
hopefully kind of that slowertime here in our off season in
November, December, I'm reallygonna focus on that.
And then for 26, that's my goalis to get CT EM certified.
And you know, the G-C-S-A-A,when we talked about it, they
had said that if I get this doneprobably pretty soon here, I'll
be the first CE outside of golf.

Trent Manning, CTEM (36:51):
How cool would that be?

Matt Leis (36:52):
that,

Trent Manning, CTEM (36:52):
be awesome, man.

Matt Leis (36:53):
And I think too, just from a advocation standpoint,
like when we talk about getting,people into the industry, new
people into the industry youknow, that maybe you could see
that there's another opportunityagain, if you wanna, if you do
wanna work on equipment, but,and maybe golf isn't your cup of
tea, like we still could maybeget somebody to get experience

(37:15):
into a place such as ourfacility or another type of
sports field and grounds acrossthe country, and that could lead
'em back into golf or if it'swith a distributor or any way
other forms.
So when I kind of started thosediscussions, it kind of
reignited that fire and drivewanting to do that.
'cause when I had left the golfcourse, that was right when I
was hopping into it, I'd studyguides and all that stuff.

(37:37):
And then I came here and I, youknow, I mean, rightfully so, you
want to dedicate yourself toyour, whatever new place you go
to.
I'm really fortunate theorganization has a continuing
education program where thosecosts are gonna be able to be
covered.
And, you know, they're verynominal costs, you know, as well
for getting study guides, takingthe tests and everything else.

(37:58):
So, the organization was veryexcited for me when I had put my
proposal together to get thefunds to do that.
And so, yeah, I'm really lookingforward to pursuing and getting
this done.
Hopefully in the next next yearhere.

Trent Manning, CTEM (38:09):
No, that is awesome.
And I remember when, you know,all of us was talking about it
and, you know, creating the EMCPexams and that stuff.
We definitely kept a positionlike yours in mind, you know,
'cause we didn't want to just,you know, pigeonhole into golf.

(38:30):
You know, and same thing with,we didn't want it just to be
something that only a technicianin the United States could get.
You know, we wanted it to beopen to Canada and the UK and to
the whole world.
It is kind of confusing a littlebit with, it's the.
Golf Course SuperintendentsAssociation of America, but they

(38:52):
are a national association andyou know, we wanted to keep all
that in mind.
So I think it's awesome thatyou're doing that.
And I'm really pulling for you.
I hope you, I hope you're thefirst one for sure.
Yeah, and you definitely have tolet me know'cause I'll go back
on the episode and change yourtitle and

Matt Leis (39:14):
Oh, there.

Trent Manning, CTEM (39:15):
put those pretty letters on there.
I try to keep up with that everytime I, like if I've interviewed
somebody Yeah.
And they get their C 10 later Itry to go back and put that on
the website and on the episode.
Let's talk about the ToroGrounds Leadership Academy that

(39:36):
you got to go to.
What was that all about?

Matt Leis (39:39):
Yeah, a few weeks ago I participated in that so Toro
they put on down, I think thiswas the fourth annual if I'm
correct.
And so they call it the GroundsLeadership Academy, and they
bring in sports field andgrounds professionals from all
across the country inpartnership with their
distributors to bring'emtogether.
It was kind of a combination ofsome soft skills training, so

(39:59):
like training and leadershipactivities.
And then also, there was also a,you know, an equipment side a
little bit in innovation wherethings are going in the
industry.
And it was just a, you know, akind of a big networking event
as well.
So I was very fortunate that Iwas asked asked by a regional
regional sales representativefor Toro, Matt Anderson.

(40:20):
He's based in Tucson, Arizona.
Him and I have gotten to knoweach other since I've been here.
And then our distributor,Simpson Norton they supported me
as well going to that.
And so that was a four day longevent up in Bloomington and
Minnesota at Toro headquarters.
We had gotten in on Monday andthen the first thing we did is

(40:40):
we had went and we saw theMinnesota Vikings training
facility that they have inEagan, Minnesota.
Very cool facility that theyhave there.
And, their head of grounds forthem.
He not only oversees thattraining facility, but then he
oversees US Bank Stadium aswell, where they the surface
there that they play on fortheir teams.

(41:01):
And so I could see there was alot of similarities in what we
do at our facility here on thebaseball side of things to what
they have going on there inMinnesota and.
So that was really unique to, tobe a part of it.
And then Tuesday it was morethat soft skills training.
And so there was a professor whocame in from the University of
Minnesota and spoke on kind of,making work better.

(41:22):
And she was a behavioralpsychologist and, you know,
talking on different tips andtricks and communication and you
know, as a leader, differentways you can communicate.
And you know, what's unique forme in my role here is I don't
have any direct reports.
You know, I'm rolling solo.
I'm supporting our team of ourfield operations staff staff.

(41:45):
We thankfully have really goodrapport so they can tell me when
things are maybe awry.
So I can make sure I can takecare of those for them so
everything's ready at a drop ofa hat.
But, so it was unique kind ofseeing some more communication
styles that you can utilize,especially when I may be working
with some people up in theclubhouse who are more on our,
more of our front office staffand how to communicate.

(42:08):
And then there was anotherpresentation which I actually
really liked that was on morethe finance side of things.
And I think we kind of losesight of that a little bit in
our roles.
It's just like, here's what weneed.
And we might pitch that to ourdirector of agronomy and say,
all right, yeah, this is what myrecommendation is.
And then they go from there on.
The financial side of it and howto pitch it to ownership groups

(42:30):
and general managers and whoeverelse.
So, I have some experience withthat being that I have an
accounting degree from back inthe day.
But that was good.
And really how to speak thelanguage of finance and
accounting on what you'reneeding and what you present to
either an ownership group or ifit's a park board a university
purchasing, procurementdepartment, whatever it would

(42:52):
happen to be.
So that was a unique thing andwe did some some other fun
things throughout the day there.
And then we got to go to a St.
Paul Saints game, though the AAAaffiliate for the Minnesota
Twins.
They have a gorgeous facility indowntown St.
Paul.
So that was a very fun socialevent to go to.
Then Wednesday was heavy on themore my world on the equipment

(43:12):
side of things.
They talked about you know,their, kind of the innovation
and research and developmentprocess.
And I had been up to Toro'stechnician training back in
2020, right before the worldshut.
That was obviously technicalbased.
We talked electricaldiagnostics, hydraulic
diagnostics, those kinds ofthings where this more was just
kinda where they believe theindustry is going.

(43:33):
You know, electrification was abig topic.
Autonomy, you know, autonomousequipment is a big topic, but
just seeing the timeline of whenan idea starts and then when it
comes to a finished product wasa very fascinating timeline.
It's a long time and you canunderstand the overhead aspect
that goes into it.
And then also that day we did aresearch and development

(43:56):
facilities tour, which I'd beenon before.
It was interesting seeing acouple of the little minor
changes that they had going.
And then we had a field day thatday where we got onto some
equipment some new things, someelectric things.
I gotta get on a vent track forthe first time.
I'd never been on one of those

Trent Manning, CTEM (44:13):
Nice.
Yep.

Matt Leis (44:14):
taking that thing down, a 35 degree slope straight
on and stopping in the middleand being able to reverse out of
it was pretty darn unique.
Not we don't really have anapplication here for that being
flat fields, but we have onelittle minor hill called the
Pictures Mound.
But.
That was unique scene.
And then some of the, even someof the irrigation stuff they had
showed us.

(44:34):
'cause their irrigation productsare, you know, very vast.
And it covers obviously all theway down to the homeowner
residential, to the golf courseside.
But they're trying to gear aline of products that's more
towards the sports field andground side, but still has some
of that controllability that wehave in golf as well.
So, those are very unique tosee.
And then on the last day it wasmore about kind of, kind of

(44:58):
creating your brand in a sense.
You know, how to use socialmedia to not only, communicate
to your external stakeholders ifit's industry peers or anything
like that, but your internalstakeholders, your ownership
groups but then too, maybe soonto be employees.
They found a lot of peopletalked about,'cause there's

(45:18):
about 30 people who are a partof this from, we're talking
university athletic groundsmanagers to just parks and
recreation grounds managers.
And, you know, some minor leaguebaseball folks pro baseball,
other pro sports, football,soccer.
So it was a very diverse groupon where people were coming

(45:40):
from.
But people talked about, like, Iwouldn't even think about it,
but like.
Having a good TikTok accountmight get you employees for the
summer

Trent Manning, CTEM (45:49):
Yeah.

Matt Leis (45:50):
They just see what you're doing and they find it
very unique.
And you know, one thing I hadtalked about during that session
is how, like I still use Twitterfor my main or ex the app former
known as Twitter as my main formof kind of keeping connected a
little bit beyond our WhatsAppgroup that we're a part of.
And, but like they, they pointedout for me how I always kind of

(46:13):
thread it where I like startwith my problem.
I go through my process of youknow, kind of finding the cause,
going through the correction andthen confirming a situation.
And so that was unique to sharemy kind of process why I do
that.
And some people in the roomfound that very interesting.
But yeah, it was a greatnetworking experience.
'cause I really, before thathadn't been, I really hadn't

(46:35):
networked with anybody in thesports field and ground side.
So even there was two people whowere, who I met there, who are
just down the road here andwould've, you know, never really
would've probably made thatconnection because we all live
in our own little worlds.
It's very similar to the golfcourse setting.
So especially for me'causethere's not, there's only a

(46:58):
couple other.
Equipment technicians on thesports field side in town,
everybody else you know, is ingolf.
And and I really hadn't madethose real connections either
before I had left golf.
So, it was a great thing fromthat aspect.
And then networked with peoplefrom across the country, made
some, you know, newacquaintances, new friends
people, you know, you'llprobably touch base and chat

(47:19):
with,

Trent Manning, CTEM (47:20):
No, that is awesome.
Will you go to the FSMA?

Matt Leis (47:23):
I've thought about it.
And actually that was actuallypart of the discussion I had
with a couple people at thatToro event is they maybe want
they wanna have somebody speakmore the equipment side of
things.
They really haven't had thatespecially recently.
And so, we've been indiscussions where I might do
some classroom sessions on onmore of the equipment side of

(47:45):
things and preventativemaintenance treating your
equipment more as assets thanjust tools.
And kind of, and what we hadtalked about too is, you know,
there's a lot of sports fieldsthat use real mowers, but
there's a lot of outside of themsending them to their
distributor to go get reground.
That, that more regular dailycutting unit maintenance they're

(48:07):
just kind of unfamiliar with.
So maybe doing a session, moreof a deep dive on general
cutting, cutting unit upkeep andadjustment.
That's something.
Those are some things we'vediscussed and so I'm looking
forward to it.
The hard thing is when thatlands is right when we got
things kicking off, typicallyhere for spring training.
So it's just a little bit of acalendar dance to potentially

(48:28):
make something like that work.

Trent Manning, CTEM (48:30):
Gotcha.
Yeah, I actually spoke at SFMAin Palm Springs in January on
cutting unit maintenance.

Matt Leis (48:39):
Alright.
There you

Trent Manning, CTEM (48:40):
yeah, and I don't, there's probably 70, 75
people in our room and there wasone guy that had a grinder.
Everybody else outsourced theirgrinding, which is kind of
understandable.
And I do think a lot of thosepeople.

(49:02):
It's might be the head field guyslash mechanic slash irrigation
tech slash you know, he'swearing all the hats at, you
know, a lot of, especiallymunicipalities and a lot of
those places.
So, but it was pretty eyeopeningthat, you know, not too many
grinders out there in sportsfields.

Matt Leis (49:25):
man, we, us having, we have a full, fully set here,
a 6 53 and a 6 73.
And that was even my perspectivewas skewed before I went up to
Toro and got to meet those 30people and we started talking
about it and I'm like, yeah whenI hit a metal cleat, I just
grind it.
We send it back out and they'relike, oh if we do that.

(49:46):
But depending on the time ofyear, it's a minimum of three
days and then it could be a weekif

Trent Manning, CTEM (49:52):
Oh

Matt Leis (49:52):
busy.
So, and I, one thing I talkedextensively with one guy was
about having maintenance cuttingunits and making that investment
and having an extra set.
But yeah that's very cool thatyou were able to go do that for

Trent Manning, CTEM (50:04):
Yeah.
No, it was awesome.
I would love to do it again.
Anything like that.
And I probably rotary too wouldbe something good to, I think,
touch on for SFMA.
Lot of opportunities there

Matt Leis (50:18):
yeah.
And the other thing I thoughtabout was kind of coming up with
a a tips and tricks of how tostill get the maintenance side
of things done for yourequipment when you don't have
the space.
I am very unique here.
I have.
3000 square feet to myself tomaintain equipment, let alone
our 15,000 square foot building.
Most people are working out of acloset when you really

Trent Manning, CTEM (50:40):
Yeah.
Yeah.

Matt Leis (50:41):
And so if it's all right, having a little ramp to
just get your cut units up alittle bit in the air so you can
do a quick adjustment check andheight check all, or you know,
for many of the differentaspects.
I think there's probably a lotof really good ideas out there.
And consolidating and presentingthose could benefit that group a
lot.

Trent Manning, CTEM (51:00):
I, no, that would be an excellent idea.
'cause I remember, like when Iwas working with the, to
distributor, I had a set of carramps that I would carry in the
van with me.
So if I had to work on atriplex, like a 26, you know, 53
or old Toro two 16 you know, andback up those ramps so you get

(51:23):
to that center cutting unit, youknow, without getting it on a
lift or something.
Because yeah, a lot of thesepeople, they don't have lifts,
you know, especiallymunicipalities and some of those
top places.
So, yeah, I mean, that would bea really good idea.
Lemme know if you need help withit.

Matt Leis (51:40):
Will do.
Yeah.
If that all kind of comes tofruition a little bit and you
know, kind of,

Trent Manning, CTEM (51:45):
ideas out there.

Matt Leis (51:46):
and kind of going back to, you know, what kind of
the typically, and again uniquehere, you think about a typical
head groundskeeper at a majorleague ballpark.
They got the one surface, butthere's so many other things
that go on, not only from a gameaspect, but then all the other
events and everything else.

(52:07):
Like their variety of what theydeal with Huge.
And that's one thing coming fromgolf.
We have member guests, we havebig charity events.
We have, we, you might be a partof a club that hosts
professional event, but like,it's golf.
I mean, that's really what we'reonly dealing with, where the

(52:29):
sports field people and groundspeople across the country when
they're dealing with concerts,graduations you know, they'll do
the, like, setting up like agolf driving range at a baseball
field event.
Kind of like they got to so manydifferent things they deal with.
And that's the uniqueness herewhere we're fortunate we just
deal with baseball and it's justbaseball on a bigger scale

(52:49):
scale.
So it's interesting getting toknow more people and the real
problems they deal with comparedto what we do here.

Trent Manning, CTEM (52:58):
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
So I got a guy that I've got toknow, and he's here with the
Georgia SFMA, and I've tried tohelp them out with some training
stuff and it's like that.
But anyway, super good guy.
And he works for a private highschool.
And it's amazing every time Italk to him, like, what are you
doing today?
Oh, the creek flooded.

(53:19):
And I mean, you know, it's justlike nothing to do with sports
fields.
Right.
You know, it's every, everythingelse.
But I think a lot of the golfpeople can understand that too.
And I think the sports fieldpeople are very similar, where
we're kind of the go-to peopleif you need something done,
yeah.
Go over to the grounds people,they'll get it done.

(53:41):
Whether it be sports fields orgolf course or whatever.

Matt Leis (53:45):
A great like recent example in the past year with
that is our two main, our twogame fields we have here had
concrete seating bowls.
And, you know, they'd gottenquotes during construction about
putting seat backs in, all thatkind of stuff.
And oh, so then it there was anemail that went out in the
organization.
They were doing a seatrenovation up at Oracle Park
where a major league team playsin San Francisco.

(54:07):
And so then that turned into,Hey Matt, do you think you could
figure out a way if we got seatsfrom Oracle Park, if we could
install'em in our seating bowls?
And it's like, all right, let'sfigure it out.
And then next thing I know I'veI've installed, like, I think
I'm at 225 seats so far.

Trent Manning, CTEM (54:25):
Oh, nice.
Awesome.

Matt Leis (54:26):
But the really unique thing about that is those seats
were original seats out ofOracle Park.
So they have seen.
World Series Championships.
They've seen you know, all stargames.
They've seen they've seen, youknow, even think, going back to
Barry Bonds, beating the homerun record, all those kinds of
situations, like, they're kindof, they're historically kind of

(54:47):
significant when it comes to theorganization.
So having them here is reallycool that there's that piece of
history with it.
And two, for our players, likewhen they're sitting in those
seats they're sitting kind ofamongst the history of the
organization, which is a reallycool thing.
But yeah that's, there's beenall those little side projects
we've come up with like evenmaking different training needs

(55:08):
for for coaches, you know, likethey want to take a base and
they want certain areas paintedon'em.
Or they want the base to be in adifferent position or we've had,
like making a home plate withcertain, like baseballs to like
just have a descriptive thingthey can show players and what
they're trying to point, they'retrying to get across.
Yeah.
All the, that's, and we alwaystalk about that.

(55:28):
We talked about the last time wetalked just about how so many
people say it's the, ourfavorite thing is that we don't
know what we're gonna get everyday.
It's the

Trent Manning, CTEM (55:35):
Oh

Matt Leis (55:36):
day and the variability and all that.
And that's still, that still istrue here, where we, you get
that variety all the time.

Trent Manning, CTEM (55:44):
yeah.
No, that's awesome.
Yeah.
I wanna say one of thestrangest, I mean, I've done a
lot of strange stuff, I guessover the years, but sports
related I was tasked withinstalling start.
Blocks around our Olympicswimming pool that they had to
be changed out.

(56:05):
So, you know, we had to core theconcrete, epoxy'em in and all.
Yeah.
It's like, how's this equipmentmanager stuff.
But I mean that's, you know, itmakes it fun, right?
Changes the day up.
Get to do, see somethingdifferent.

Matt Leis (56:19):
And I know those types of projects, just like the
seats, those are ones you'd goback and see later and you go, I
did that.
Like,

Trent Manning, CTEM (56:27):
Yeah.
No, that's

Matt Leis (56:28):
cool.
Like I would've never expected Iwas gonna do that, but I did it
and it looks pretty good

Trent Manning, CTEM (56:34):
Yeah, it worked out.
All right.

Matt Leis (56:36):
and those are always good, seeing those reminders
from time to time.

Trent Manning, CTEM (56:40):
Well, so we got a four face clock at our
putting green that I installed.
I don't know if it was lastyear, the year before.
So yeah.
Anyway, every time I see thatclock, I'm like, yep.
Did that, that worked good.
Cool stuff.
You wanna do some rapid fire?

Matt Leis (56:57):
Sure.

Trent Manning, CTEM (56:59):
What's your favorite movie?

Matt Leis (57:01):
The original top gun is high up there for me.

Trent Manning, CTEM (57:04):
Oh yeah.
Well, what'd you think aboutMaverick?

Matt Leis (57:06):
I enjoyed Maverick.
I think I hyped it up too muchin my head going

Trent Manning, CTEM (57:10):
Okay.

Matt Leis (57:11):
But that was that was one movie.
Like I, I went and saw it intheaters on my own.
I was my wife was out of town ona business trip, and I'm like, I
can't I'm gonna go check thisout.
It was really cool still though,but I really liked it.

Trent Manning, CTEM (57:25):
That was good.
Good.
What would be your last meal?

Matt Leis (57:29):
Ribeye, potatoes and asparagus.

Trent Manning, CTEM (57:32):
I love it.
Sounds great.
And I'm really hungry too.
What are you most proud ofbesides your family?

Matt Leis (57:39):
I think taking a leap of faith into a new kind of
unknown when I got into the golfindustry initially.
I talk with a lot of my friendswho.
I kind of thought I was crazyleaving a somewhat stable job in
the business aviation industryto go find something that I love
and I know I'm I don't know howthe same goes about.

(58:02):
You know, you never work a dayif you love what you're doing,
kind of thing, actually, and Ifeel like I found that.

Trent Manning, CTEM (58:07):
That's awesome, man.
Yeah, you can't be, I mean, whatelse could you be proud of?
If you can't be proud of that?
That is, that's super cool.
Good for you.
And I mean, I agree.
Yeah.
You find what you like.
It's I mean, I enjoy going towork every day.
I really do.
And a lot of times I'm on thereon the weekends because I enjoy
it, not because.
The boss says, you need to behere.

(58:30):
You know, and I, fortunateenough at where I'm at, I get
to, I got some of my stuffthere, like a meal and a lay
that I brought in, and I get totinker, you know, and do other
stuff.
It's like my little playground.

Matt Leis (58:44):
And it's similar to me where I find myself coming in
here on a Saturday or a Sundayat random times all the time,
and it's about a 25 minute drivefrom my house, so it's not like
it's right next door.
But two, I'm fortunate I get tobring my get to bring my dogs
with me pretty regularly towork.
So when it's 110 degrees outsideit's a benefit to be able to

(59:08):
bring them down here.
They can a run around in theshop, but then get'em out on the
fields run around in a safeplace too, that's all fenced in
and everything else.
I would find myself doing thatway more often than I would've
thought I would've.

Trent Manning, CTEM (59:22):
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Well, not that it's the same,but I used to bring my girls
when they were younger to theshop all the time, and they
helped me do whatever they wouldget on the equipment lift, ride
it up and down as many times asI wanted to.
The buttons drive a golf cartaround and around the shop.
You know, I wouldn't let em goout on the course, but I'm like,

(59:44):
you drive around the shop and Imean, like, my oldest daughter,
and she was probably 12 orwhatever she would do lap after
lap.
And then I said, all right,honey, it's time to go.
So, oh, come on dad, just onemore lap.
I'm like, you've done 35 laps.
You know what, why do you wannado one more?
But anyway and I think it helped'em driving too, like,

Matt Leis (01:00:07):
Oh, I bet it

Trent Manning, CTEM (01:00:07):
getting their license, you know, I mean,
gives you spatial awareness and.
You know, you learn your rightfrom your left and all those fun
things.
It's good stuff man.
Good stuff.
Well thank you so much for beingon Matt, and if you need help
putting together tips andtricks, let me know'cause I want
to

Matt Leis (01:00:24):
Yeah, for sure.

Trent Manning, CTEM (01:00:24):
to SFMA for sure.
I'd be happy to help you.

Matt Leis (01:00:29):
All right.
Well, thanks again, Trent.
I was glad to touch base withyou all again and again, this
was great.
And again, looking forward tocontinuing.
I'm a very regular listener,obviously still stay in touch
and active in the WhatsAppgroup.
And so again, thank you so muchfor having me.

Trent Manning (01:00:49):
thank you so much for listening to the Reel turf
techs podcast.
I hope you learned somethingtoday.
Don't forget to subscribe.
If you have any topics you'dlike to discuss, or you'd like
to be a guest, find us onTwitter at Reel turf techs.