2022 title is the fourth consecutive national championship for BYU
While basketball fans are glued to the hardwood for this year’s NCAA Tournament, BYU’s landscaping program just quietly won a national title on a different playing surface: turf.
This past week BYU took home its fourth-consecutive National Collegiate Landscape Title, a championship that means BYU is once again best in the land for taking care of land… and water and rocks and trees and shrubs.
Getting to the Sweet 16 regularly is one thing, but this is the eighth national title for BYU since 2003. BYU’s team score, compiled from 30 individual competitions ranging from landscape design to irrigation assembly, grew to 4,739.68, which beat out North Carolina State, Michigan State, Mississippi State, Penn State and 40 other competing universities.
“We were like many of the schools in that we didn’t have a lot of experience on our team since the competition hasn’t been held for the last two years,” said faculty adviser Greg Jolley, BYU professor of landscape management. “Our partnership with BYU Grounds has been critical in keeping our students ready.”
Most of BYU’s landscape team works for BYU Grounds and employees there help students prepare for the competition on their own time. Five BYU Grounds employees traveled to the event this year, held at North Carolina State University, and “spent months in advance helping students prepare,” according to Jolley.
“They are our secret weapon,” he said.
BYU’s 37 competing students earned 18 of 75 scholarships awarded — far and away the highest of any competing school — which totaled nearly $25,000 in scholarship winnings. There were also three BYU students who finished first in their individual competitions:
- Brayden Johnson in Business Management
- Abby Kjar in Interior Landscape Design
- Jesse Earl in Plant Problem Diagnosis
The 2022 Championship BYU team was led by two captains, Janetta Teichert and Ashley Beazer. Beazer, a junior landscaping major from Erda, Utah, is ecstatic about defending BYU's crown once again, but she said winning isn't the most important thing.
"Of course we want to represent ourselves and BYU well; to show everyone that we are hardworking, that we have integrity and that we love what we are doing," Beazer said. "But we really love the chance to go out and meet students from other schools, help them however we can and build lasting relationships."
Jolley said the relationships formed with the National Association of Landscape Professionals has been a joy to BYU's landscape management program for decades. The NALP even created The Scott Allen Memorial Scholarship, an endowment that honors the late son of BYU landscape management professor Phil Allen.
The other 12 BYU students who finished in either second place or third place in their individual competitions were:
- Adam Boden, Annual & Perennial Identification (2nd)
- Ashley Beazer, Business Management (2nd); Sales Presentation (3rd)
- Johanna Davis/Gavin Heap, Employee Development (2nd)
- Noah Stoner, Irrigation Design (2nd); Irrigation Troubleshooting (3rd)
- Rebekah Hogan, Exterior Landscape Design (3rd)
- Angelica Franco, Flower & Foliage Identification (3rd)
- Sam Merrill, Irrigation Troubleshooting (3rd)
- Rebecca Decker/Katherine Shipley/Janetta Teichert, Landscape Plant Installation (3rd)
- Clarissa Peterson, Turf & Weed Identification (3rd)
