Virginia GCSA announces 2014 award winners

The Virginia Golf Course Superintendents Association (VGCSA) announced its 2015 award winners at its annual meeting on Jan. 27 at Fredericksburg CC (Va.).

Winners include:

• Dudley Eames of Keysville, Va., who won the Presidents Award for Lifetime Service;
• Christian Sain, who was honored with the Distinguished Service award;
• Jeff Berg, who received the award for Environmental Stewardship; and
• Travis Roberson, who was the VGCSA scholarship recipient.

Dudley Eames

Dudley Eames

Dudley Eames won the 2014 the VGCSA Presidents Award for Lifetime Service.

The VGCSA’s highest award is “to honor those superintendent pioneers who were instrumental in state and local affairs, but who may no longer be actively involved in the VGCSA. Qualifications include 20 years or more of service to the turfgrass industry, at least 10 of which were as a superintendent.”

Eames attended the San Diego Golf Academy and has held positions at local San Diego public courses and at the following Virginia courses and clubs: Salisbury CC, Stonehenge CC, Pine Hills (formerly Pocoshock), The Brookwoods GC and the CC of Virginia on the Tuckahoe Creek Course.

In June of 1991 a brand new course was beginning construction — the Dominion Club. Eames was hired as the construction/grow-in superintendent, and the club opened the following year. The club hosted the Nike Dominion Open, the PGA Tour’s developmental circuit. His final move was to Jefferson Lakeside.

“This is the highlight of my career. I was always low profile, but I maintained relationships and rode a lot of coattails,” Eams says. “I got my inspiration from others, and I couldn’t have done it without the support of my family. I was away a lot more than I wanted.”

Eames retired in October of 2013 and moved to Keysville, Va., with his wife Patty. They have a son Justin, who is 32 and living in Baltimore.
 

Christian Sain

Christian Sain

Christian Sain of The CC of Virginia has been recognized by the VGCSA with its Distinguished Service Award for 2014.

The award is “presented to a member who has given his time unselfishly in promoting golf course management and unification of the Virginia Golf Course Superintendents.”

By age 16, Sain began working at the Hendersonville CC (N.C.) course in the bag room cleaning clubs. A year later he joined the maintenance grew, attended North Carolina State University’s agronomy program.

While in college, he interned at The Honors Course (Tenn.), Shoal Creek (Ala.) — during the PGA Championship — and Muirfield Village (Ohio). He worked as an assistant at Hermitage CC (Va.) after college.

Sain then worked at Virginia’s Kingsmill Resort Woods Course and then its River Course in 1998, home of the PGA Tour event.

Sain lastly worked as the director of golf and grounds maintenance at the Country Club of Virginia.

“It is an honor to be recognized by your peers. What better recognition can you have than to receive an award from people who know and do the same job?” Sain says. “They understand what you’re doing, and that makes it special.”
 

Jeff Berg

Jeff Berg

Jeff Berg has been recognized by the VGCSA as the fourth recipient of its Environmental Stewardship Award.

The award is presented “in recognition of distinguished and meritorious service in the environmental stewardship of Virginia golf courses, and in grateful appreciation for unselfishly promoting the profession of golf course management, which led to the advancement of the association.”

Berg is the general manager at Goose Creek GC, an environmentally friendly course located alongside the creek that bears its name, in Loudoun County ,Va. He is a regional superintendent for KemperSports and a long-time VGCSA leader, having served on the board as then-president in 2010-11.

Berg worked at Village Greens GC in the Chicago suburb of Woodridge pulling weeds, edging bunkers, picking balls from ponds, etc. H worked as an intern at Canoe Brook CC (N.J.), where his father was a superintendent, and attended the turfgrass science program at Penn State.

He worked as his father’s assistant at Valley Brook CC (Pa.) after graduation. He has also held positions at Venango Trail GC (Pa.), Goose Creek GC (Va.), and is now the general manager and oversees other superintendents at KemperSports.

“This award is about the people I worked with and the effort that we all gave,” Berg says. “A lot of names are associated with the success of our association. It is truly an honor to be recognized by my peers in this fashion.”
 

Travis Roberson

Travis Roberson

Travis Roberson of Stuart, Va., has been named the VGCSA Scholarship Winner for 2014-15. Roberson is one of the top students in Virginia Tech’s crop and soil environmental science program in the turfgrass management discipline. His expected graduation is May of 2016.

Roberson received an associate’s degree at Virginia’s Patrick Henry Community College and continued his studies at the New River Community College. He enrolled in Virginia Tech’s turf program in the fall of 2014 after working two summers at Primland Resort (Va.).

In his first semester at Tech, Roberson earned a 3.8 GPA. He also became a research assistant at the Glade Road Research Center at Tech and is involved in the university’s Turf Club.

He will be completing an internship at Kinloch GC in the summer of 2015, the No. 1 course in Virginia

His long-term goal is to obtain an assistant superintendent job upon graduation.

“This award means a lot to me,” Roberson says. “The majority of my support for college comes from student loans, with help from my parents and my own money. This scholarship is greatly appreciated.”

Photos courtesy of the VGCSA