MTC Turf News – Julie Holt, Content Director, TheTurfZone.com
The Turf Zone: Welcome to The Turf Zone. In this episode of Maryland Turfgrass, we’re talking to Logan Freeman, MTC Board Member and Golf Course Superintendent at Mountain Branch Golf Club in Joppa, Maryland. Logan, thanks for joining me. So let’s start at the beginning and get a little background on you. How did you decide to pursue a career in turfgrass management? 
Logan Freeman: I just kind of stumbled into it in high school. Senior year of high school, my dad brought home an application for a local country club in Boise, Idaho where I used to live. And he’s like “Here’s an opportunity for a summer job,” and I thought okay, I’ll check it out. So I filled out the application and went down and did it. I ended up with a summer job where I started just a couple weeks after graduating high school, way back in ‘99 and I enjoyed it. All I did was rake bunkers the first year, pretty much, and do detail work. But it just kept in the back of my mind something that I was enjoying, even though I think I honestly tried to get out of it, like three or four different times in the first two or three years that I worked there. I ended up sticking it out and kept coming back and honestly, through college I was thinking I was going a different direction, I was going to get into emergency response, that was where I thought I was going to go. But lo and behold, twenty-some years later and I still haven’t left.
 
TTZ: So you never dabbled in other areas of turfgrass management – no sports fields or lawn and landscape? 
LF: For about three months I helped a friend of mine start his lawn care business. I was his residential irrigation tech. I did that and at the club I had been at for several years before, the assistant superintendent position came open. I thought I would just go talk to the superintendent at the time about it to see – he had been my boss before when I’d left and just to ask him if he thought I was qualified for the position, if I’d be a good fit and he said “of course” and that’s how I ended up really getting back into it and at that point, I think I had finally decided it would be a career, potentially, a path that I was looking to follow. I was an assistant at that club for several years and then when I left there, I moved out to Maryland in 2010 and came out here and didn’t have a job. I followed some family at the time and came out and was able to stumble into the assistant position at Mountain Branch that came open. So I took that and then that position led me into, 5/6 months later, into the superintendent position when it came available. Lately I have started doing some side job stuff myself, I’d always done family’s, that sort of stuff, helping out lawncare wise, now I’ve started my own side business where I do some fertilizer applications and aerification mainly, stuff like that. I don’t do mowing and things, but that business has just kind of been some added, extra income where I’m able to use my skillset and I’ve actually developed that to be a pretty nice little business, so I understand both sides, but I’ve never done sports turf. I love what sports turf people do and how they do it and it’s fascinating and I enjoy how lawn care companies work and other golf superintendents and it’s part of what I enjoy in the business, is just learning from everybody possible.
 
TTZ: That brings me to your involvement in Maryland Turfgrass Council. How did you decide to get involved in that role as a board member and what do you think is most important about bring a part of a membership like that? 
LF: Since I moved out here I’ve been a member of the Mid-Atlantic Golf Course Superintendents. MAGCS is just an awesome group and I’ve really enjoyed supporting them and going to their functions and all that. Then I was like, “Well, it’s time for me to start to give back and how do I want to do it?