"It all kind of happened by accident at the 2000 Carolinas Show," says Rogers. "We were talking about equipment and then the topic kind turned toward maybe getting an association started." A more formal meeting to explore the idea was scheduled for the 2001 Carolinas GCSA Conference. Rex Floyd, was serving as president of the CGCSA at the time. He hosted the service tech seminars that year and admits to not knowing what to expect at that first organizational meeting when they asked those interested to stay after the regular educational seminar.
August 1, 2005 The outmoded stereotype of a golf course mechanic -- a guy of perhaps limited abilities, covered in grease and turning a wrench on a golf cart -- is something the Turf Equipment Technicians Association of the Carolinas (TETAC) are striving to update. "There's a lot more to being a turf equipment technician than that," says Dale Rogers, president of the three-and-half-year old organization. Today's golf course mechanic (or turf equipment technician) generally has far more responsibilities than he had in past and is maintaining equipment that is far more technologically advanced than it once was, says Rogers. "I'd like to see a little more credit going to the profession. Computerized diagnosis takes a higher level of thinking than your ‘shade tree mechanic’ has to have," he says. "The service technician is responsible for parts inventory and for shop organization. Techs at some larger golf courses have their own budgets and sometimes help manage the crew, particularly when the superintendent is not around. There is a little more to it than just changing spark plugs." Although service technicians had occasionally talked about forming an association for years, Rogers traces TETAC's roots to a seminar that took place at the CGCSA conference in Myrtle Beach 2000. The seminar, entitled "The 100 Most Frequently Asked Questions By Service Technicians," was added to conference's seminar line-up when a previously scheduled seminar had to be scratched. "I figured that after the seminar, we might have five people stay for the meeting," says Floyd, who began his golf course maintenance career as a mechanic and then spent more than 20 years as an assistant superintendent and superintendent. By the time the organizational meeting began, however, roughly 60 mechanics had crowded into the room. "After 15 or 20 minutes the room was just buzzing. These guys were just networking and asking questions.... After about an hour of discussion, I said, 'Let's see a show of hands of people who want to see a service technician association get started.' The whole room raised their hands," says Floyd, who has continued to serve as an adviser to the organization. According to TETAC's mission statement the purpose of the organization is to enhance the professional image of turf equipment technicians, to raise the safety awareness of technicians and to improve the technical knowledge of TETAC members though education and communication with the turf equipment industry. Rogers, who went to work as a field service technician for Jacobsen-Textron after seven years as a golf course tech, says that TETAC also provides a framework for service techs to network about work-related issues. To that end, he says the association is developing a database that includes the contact information of member technicians and the type of equipment that is used at their golf courses. Technicians who have maintenance or repair problems with a particular piece of equipment can use the database to call on fellow technicians who may be able to offer practical advice. "TETAC is an organization for techs to get together to hash out issues, attend seminars and to really try to better the profession through education and self image," says Rogers, a native of Carthage, NC. TETAC attracted approximately 60 members in its first year and has grown by leaps and bounds ever since. Rogers believes TETAC is the largest state or regional turf technician association in America. Membership in TETAC is open to anyone involved in the turf equipment industry but Rogers estimates that 75 percent of members are golf course service techs. The remaining 25 percent consists of vendors, vendor field techs, and superintendents. While the majority of members reside in North Carolina or South Carolina, there are also members from Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. Despite the impressive growth of the association in its first three and half years, Rogers says he expects TETAC membership to increase even more in coming years. "We didn't have in mind at its inception how big this could actually get and how quickly. And so far we've only tapped about 10 percent of the total number of technicians in North and South Carolina," he says. By 2002, the Turfgrass Council of North Carolina was on board donating staff time to market TETAC and manage the membership processes as well as offered a location for seminars anywhere that the TCNC hosted a meeting including their annual Conference & Show. After having held the TETAC Conference in conjunction with the Carolinas Conference and Show each year, in November 2004 TETAC hosted its first stand-alone seminar series at Horry-Georgetown Technical College in Conway, S.C. The two-day TETAC Conference featured a round-robin series of seminars that included sessions on hydraulic pumps, centrifugal pumps, computerized record keeping, diesel engine trouble shooting, welding, shop organization and other topics. Horry-Georgetown Tech has a golf equipment technicians program*, complete with labs and "Technology changes so much, especially in golf course equipment," he says. "It is getting a lot more complicated with computers and things like that. It really helps the technician to stay on top of improvements and changes that vendors are making." Rogers credits much of the TETAC success and pins its future prospects to strong support by the Carolinas GCSA and the Turfgrass Council of North Carolina. And an important goal of the technician association is to enhance the working relationship between equipment technicians and golf course superintendents, he says. Chuck Borman, executive director of the Carolinas GCSA, says it is in superintendents' own interest to support their equipment technicians' association. "If you give the choice to most superintendents as to who the most important person on their crew is, they will tell you that it's their equipment maintenance technician. Having a good, qualified technician is directly proportional to how successful they are. Anything we can do to help make sure that they get the training they need and that they're recognized for how important they are just helps the superintendents and their own profession, " Borman says. *Note: as of August 1, 2008, the Turf Equipment Technicians program at Horry-Georgetown Technical College, the last one of it’s kind in the Carolinas, was discontinued. However, HGTC has agreed to assist TETAC by offering official continuing education credits for the classes held at the annual TETAC Conference. –This history lesson was brought to you by the founders of TETAC as of August 1, 2005: Rex Floyd, Dale Rogers, Brandon Gayle, John Riopel, Lynn Lane, Jeff Raynor, Bill Ledford, Walt Sizemore, Greg Womble, Freddie Proctor, Ben Pinckney, Kenny Cloninger, and Hank Rhoades. For membership information about the Turf Equipment Technicians Association of the Carolinas: **link to membership application**
classrooms, which proved an ideal site for the TETAC Conference, Rogers says. The seminar series attracted roughly 135 technicians, some of whom later joined the association. Such educational opportunities are the key for professional development of service techs and for the continued growth of TETAC, Rogers says.
| < Prev |
|---|
