The Heart and Hustle of Catlin Gabel’s Grounds Crew

Charlie Nemecek ’25

Courtesy of Catlin Gabel's website.

For Associate Director of Grounds Mike Wilson, maintaining Catlin Gabel’s sprawling 67-acre campus means so much more than mowing lawns, blowing pathways, or trimming trees. In his 22 years on the job, Wilson has worked through storms, heat waves, and early calls all to keep Catlin Gabel as stunning and functional as it is. But behind the scenes, this job requires a meticulous, exhausting, and often unseen effort and precision that makes it all possible.  

Each morning, Wilson and his team like to hit the ground running. Their day starts early, around 7:30 a.m., with essential maintenance like clearing pathways which the team tends to do biweekly. Wilson says, “ideally in the fall, we like to get everything once a week.” This may sound simple, but the crew navigates time constraints, equipment challenges, and even pesky neighbors who don't like the noise of the blowers.

For athletics fields, the team follows a careful regimen to keep grass healthy and ready for students’ athletic practices and events. Contractors handle mowing on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on wet days, the team has to adjust schedules or even postpone work to avoid tearing up the beautiful sand-based grass. Then there is painting field lines and repairing broken sprinkler heads that Wilson is “pretty suspicious are being kicked,” as well as tending to trees and hedges. “There’s not a set routine,” Wilson explains because nature doesn’t follow one either. 

Every year, the crew strips and reseeds the fields which is a costly but necessary process to ensure safety and quality of play. “Every year we had been cutting the entire surface off, and regrowing a brand new field every year,” Wilson says. A task that comes with a whopping price tag of roughly $90,000 per strip. It should be mentioned that Mike’s crew has to do this for both the upper and lower soccer fields as well.  

While the beauty of the grounds is certainly visible, much of the team’s work is invisible both in scope and complexity. Wilson’s crew takes care of nearly every aspect of campus maintenance, from “the tops of the roof all the way to what’s in the ground.” This means they handle roofing repairs, exterior painting, managing drainage systems, maintaining water and gas lines, and much more. Wilson explains that the best way to describe it is “anything the rain hits” is in their purview. 

One of the most significant challenges Mike said he has ever faced was last year's brutal January storm that struck campus with unmatched ferocity, pushing the crew’s endurance and skill to the limit. Wilson recalls, “We were working 12-plus hours a week” and doing “We were [working] 5 days a week, and doing six, seven days worth of work in that period.”

 For days, the campus looked nothing like its usual self. Buildings had trees toppled on top of them, towering mounds of snow piled in parking lots as well as thick sheets of ice burying the footpaths that would otherwise be spotless during a normal school day.The storm left a trail of destruction that took nearly nine months to fully recover from. “We literally finished up the third week in September,” Wilson emphasizes. 

The sheer extent of the damage, coupled with the pressure to restore campus as quickly as possible to get the school up and running, pushed everyone to their limits. Wilson also mentioned that around the time of storm cleanup, he had gotten back surgery which significantly inhibited his ability to move heavy stuff around. 

Wilson and his team know that each season brings unique demands. In the fall, they’re in full swing with leaf-blowing, grass care, and keeping all the pathways clear. 

Winter is dominated by managing waterlines, including clearing storm drains, unblocking flooded pathways, and monitoring and taking care of freeze damage as seen in last year's storm cleanup. 

In the spring, the wet muddy grounds are particularly difficult to mow. Wilson emphasized a new remote-controlled model mower that can help them tackle the campus’s steeper hillsides in the wet season safely. 

During the summer, when students are off campus, the crew has a rare opportunity to focus on larger projects. They bring in hundreds of cubic yards of mulch equating to about 800 dump truck loads and spread it across campus. They also fix any long-standing issues and reinforce any areas used heavily throughout the year. It’s a huge undertaking, but it pays off as fall comes and students arrive back to a stunning campus.

Aside from the seasonal challenges, finding the right team members is a challenge in itself. “We wanted to get somebody with a bit above entry-level skill” Wilson explains, “but had no qualified applicants,” Wilson explains that the hiring problem isn’t just a Catlin problem, but an industry-wide problem. Without sufficient hands, each task becomes that much more difficult; however, Wilson's team is committed to the job, even if it means occasionally working beyond normal hours.  

Wilson emphasizes the importance of pacing themselves to avoid burnout, especially in times of crisis, such as the one in January. Wilson explains that “We also have families to go home to at night, and that we want to spend weekends with.”

When questioned about changes that could make the job easier, Wilson reflected on the need for understanding from the community. “We have a very disruptive kind of presence on campus,” he shared. Wilson urges students to recognize the challenges posed by their tasks, he added: “Most things we do [are] taking up a space or making noise—mostly making noise is the biggest problem.”

Wilson emphasized the crew's dedication to minimizing disruptions, “We really look at the entire school as one school and do our best to impact the least amount of people with our choices,” he explained. Though their work may sometimes feel intrusive to individuals, he wants the Catlin community to know that the crew works hard to consider the “whole picture”  and reduce their impact wherever possible. 

For Mike Wilson, maintaining Catlin Gabel’s campus is more than clearing pathways or mowing fields. Each day is dedicated to keeping the grounds pristine and more importantly, functional. Despite the occasional disruption their work may cause, Wilson emphasizes the importance of including facilities and their work in the larger Catlin community. Every pathway cleared, every field maintained, and every tree taken care of is a commitment to the community they serve.