Utah State Claims Dominance In Agriculture With Elaborate Grass Design For Gorgeous Soccer Field

Utah State, I owe you an apology. I was not familiar with your game.

We are all sleeping on the grounds crew in Logan!

The Aggies established their dominance in agriculture with the greatest field design in college soccer. Will this inspire a challenger to step up and come for their crowd? Stay tuned.

Utah State is an ag school.

Utah State University was founded as a public land-grand research university under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts in 1888 as one of the state’s two flagship universities. According to its original charter, the school was founded to focus on mechanic arts, science, agriculture, technology and military science.

Today, it enrolls approximately 30,000 students in total.

Considering its nickname, the Aggies, Utah State is proud of its ties to agriculture. It is ranked as the top ag school in the state and one of the top programs in the United States, offering 72 degrees across a wide range of agriculture disciplines. Students learn through hand-on work like field research and labs.

One of the most important parts of the agriculture program at Utah State is its ties to the grounds crew. The campus itself serves as a living laboratory. Students learn horticulture, turf management and environmental stewardship in real time. Many principles in their studies, like soil management and irrigation, directly translate into real-life employment with a grounds crew.

Several members of the staff at Utah State, including the school’s lead horticulturists, are alumni of the agriculture program. They learn how to take care of the campus and never leave. Why would you? It’s beautiful!

Utah State’s grounds crew plants roughly 60,000 flowers around campus each year. Those flowers are grown in the greenhouse on campus. Their work relies on the technical skill in plant propagation, landscape design and irrigation learned from the student curriculum.

All of this goes to say…

The grounds crew is elite!

Before we go any further here, I must note that it is not uncommon for a professional sport organization to mow a specific pattern into its grass field. We see it a lot in baseball.

Although it is to a lesser extent, that can also be true for collegiate athletics. It just depends on the school, the occasion, and the grounds crew. That third piece of the equation is most important. You can’t execute proper field management without the grounds crew.

And that also applies to the campus as a whole.

Utah State was named as the top grounds crew in the nation in 2020 and consistently ranks near the top. They are known for their elaborate designs on the Quad, like this American flag for 9/11: