Watch highlights from the Groundskeepers Panel at 2025 SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference
At the seventh annual SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference on September 20, 2025, the Groundskeepers Panel included Alexa Brown, Nicole Sherry, and Leah Withrow, moderated by Megan Kruger.
Brown has been a member of the Tulsa Drillers grounds crew since 2020. She also has experience working in field maintenance with the University of Oklahoma Athletics Department, where she helped maintain the fields for the university’s nationally recognized football, softball, and baseball programs.
Sherry is the Baltimore Orioles’ Director of Field Operations after spending 14 seasons as the Orioles Head Groundskeeper. In November 2006, she became just the second woman ever to serve as the head groundskeeper with a Major League team.
Withrow spent five seasons as the Head Groundskeeper for the Reno Aces, the Triple-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks. She now works for Arizona State University as an Assistant Field Manager, helping to oversee 25 acres of athletic fields for multiple sports.
- Video: Click here to watch a replay of the 2025 Groundskeepers Panel (YouTube)
Here are some highlights:
On breaking into the field
- Brown: “It kind of came on my radar. I’ve always loved baseball and it kind of just came to me. It’s like, ‘Why do I not work at the baseball field?’ … I was only the second woman to ever apply and be on the Drillers team.”
- Sherry: “We had a few classes on turf grass management. … In one of my classes, it was an irrigation class. We took a field trip to Camden Yards and that’s when I was like, ‘Wow, you can really do turf grass management at a professional level.’ And then I just was interested in seeing if there were any internship availabilities and I was offered an internship later that year. I got into the field, still questioned whether I wanted to pursue this or not, but eventually I was like, ‘You know what, this is something I love. I love baseball. I love the game.”
On the most fulfilling aspects of groundskeeping
- Withrow: “It is definitely the people because there’s nobody else working your same hours and your same schedule that you’re around as much. So it’s really important to have people you enjoy. And then it is very rewarding being a small piece of the game, a small large piece, because as much as the front office would like to think they could get a game ready if I just didn’t show up to work one day, I just don’t think it would be the same. And I think there’s some pride in that, that what I do is so unique it would take a special person to replace that.”
- Sherry: “Every time a ball gets hit to the infield and it makes a perfect hop, that’s part of us helping the team. … Seeing the professional athletes and giving them a surface that is impeccable is something we take a lot of pride in. I think that keeps me coming back day after day. Just striving to win, to be part of the team. Hopefully we make the playoffs and eventually a World Series. … I really do just love the science of the grass. I love seeing all the things it can go through. It still looks amazing every single day and that’s a big attribution from our staff.”
Adapting to facility needs beyond baseball
- Sherry: “Camden Yards never really had concerts, and then all of a sudden now we’re doing concerts. So I had to reach out to my counterparts and friends in the industry and say, ‘How did you manage this?’ … We work so hard to make this perfect playing surface and then people want to throw all these events on it that destroy the surface you spend 100-hour weeks on. It’s a learning curve, for sure, and I’m still learning it every day and trying my best to understand what it is (to take care of) an event venue.”
On leaving a legacy for younger women to be groundskeepers
- Brown: “For me, if I could do it — somebody with no experience at all — come in and do this job, then I think anybody could do it. When I worked for (Oklahoma) athletics, I was the first girl who they hired. They have women now working on that team, so I just want to be an example for them. And even the fact that I’m African American, I know there’s not a lot of African American women who are in groundskeeping. I’m somebody that didn’t even have a degree in turf management at all, and I can go out and have these wonderful work experiences, then I think anybody could do it.”
- Withrow: “I think it’s important to start lifting the curtain and expose the wizard behind Oz, and show the world what we do. I think it’s super important that we’re breaking those stereotypes. I think the best way to do it is via social media. Our industry, unfortunately in the past few years, we haven’t had as many young people wanting to get into it. A lot of colleges who had offered this degree previously now don’t. … It’s sad for these kids that won’t get the opportunity to see this is a career path. And so I’m trying to change that, and by posting it on Instagram or on a TikTok video, hoping a junior in high school scrolls through and sees, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’”
Transcription assistance by Shandi Allison.
For more coverage of the 2025 SABR/IWBC Women in Baseball Conference, visit SABR.org/women-in-baseball-conference/2025.
Originally published: September 25, 2025. Last Updated: October 6, 2025.