By Henry Thompson
Every day after school, students dedicate their precious free time to Lovett’s sports program, the vast majority of whom do so on one of Lovett’s many sports fields. And what would a sports field be without lines? How could we ever possibly play our sports without the crisp, white border cleanly painted onto the fields for our benefit?
These questions never once crossed my mind throughout my many years as an athlete, yet, as the high school exited the building during a routine fire drill and sat down in the stadium, we saw a most wondrous sight: A little robot was slowly (yet with some determination?) scooting its way across the field. And in its wake? Bright. Clean. Perfect. Lines.
This little robot quickly stole the hearts of students and faculty across the high school, conversations breaking out across the stands about the cute little robot (with googly eyes mind you), slowly preparing the Oakley – Conley field for a game of soccer.
Even after the conclusion of our free entertainment, love of the robot (I’m going to start calling it Linus now for no particular reason other than it’s a half-decent pun) persisted. Any time Linus was brought up in conversation, you could expect to be met with a chorus of praise and excitement for our little line layer.
This very thing happened when Mr. Newman proposed writing a story on Linus (at the time still just the painting robot), with the entire class clamoring to express how cute they thought the determined little robot was.
After some deliberation, I happily took the story (obviously) and began searching for who was in charge of Linus, eventually finding myself with head Lovett groundskeeper Joe Breiding.
Mr. Breiding kindly took me to Linus’ residence up near the baseball fields, a warehouse-like building full of groundskeeping machinery of all shapes and sizes (I noticed a rather scary-looking vehicle with two three-foot-long saws protruding from it). Mr. Breiding named the new tractor and Linus as his favorites. “They’re super fun to use,” he said.
This was the first time I was given a name to go with the robot’s face, this time in the form of its model name: “The Turf Tank I” (I’m still calling it Linus.) Although Turf Tank (the company) has since released the Turf Tank II, Mr. Breiding explained that they’re still waiting on the upcoming release of the Turf Tank III before they purchase a new model (Turf Tanks are a lot like phones, apparently). “Right now it’s just not worth it to buy a whole new robot yet,” he explained.
In the meantime, Mr. Breiding and the rest of the groundskeeping staff have taken good care of Linus, maintaining his systems and providing him with his signature googly eyes among other things (although when I saw him in the warehouse, one of such googly eyes was missing; Mr. Breiding says it just fell off earlier that day).
Though I’d given the robot my own name, Mr. Breiding said he and his staff still hadn’t come up with one. “I’ve been emailing the office for like three years now, but we’ve never worked something fun out,” he said. I really should suggest they go with Linus.
Much like the student body and staff of the upper school, Lovett groundskeeping maintains a love for Linus, except for them, it’s much more personal. Linus is an incredibly capable little robot who gets the job done. Mr. Breiding explained that painting lines on the football field would take him and a whole team of people six or more hours to paint cleanly, but now with the Turf Tank, “it will take one person two hours at most.” Furthermore, Linus is apparently even more effective on softball and baseball fields, usually painting them in around thirty minutes.
Unfortunately, Linus is not all-powerful (never thought I would say that about a robot), and there are still some field-painting tasks that the groundskeepers must do themselves. Namely, these tasks include the logo in the center of the field and the numbers for the football field. “We have to use stencils and manual paint sprayers to go over a spot multiple times,” he said. “Before, the Turf Tank, that’s pretty much how we would do the whole field.”
At this point, you’re probably wondering how Linus even works, and the answer is both more complicated than you would expect. Originally, when Linus was purchased three years ago, he could only function with the help of a guiding device on a tripod placed at the edge of the sports field, which provided directions and boundaries while being overseen by a staff member.
Now, Turf Tank has moved its headquarters closer, allowing Lovett to establish a more direct connection to the system. Proudly, Mr. Breiding discussed the newer system. “We actually have a little satellite up there keeping the connection,” he said, “so now all I have to do is keep the fields and information loaded onto the app.” Of course, a person is still needed there to keep Linus on track, just in case, and to refill his paint reserves if necessary. Luckily, Mr. Breiding described the process of helping as “pretty easy,” so once the system is set up, little work is required.
Problems still occur, but for now, nothing overly serious has happened. As Mr. Breiding explained, “We used to have a lot of problems with the receiver and had to replace it a lot, but now our main issue is just interference, which is generally due to excessive cloud cover.”
Linus is an unsung hero of the Lovett school (alongside the entirety of the groundskeeping staff, to be honest), and is completely deserving of the love and adoration he has received. Maybe next time you’re playing sports on a Lovett field, you should stop and take a second to thank Linus for his work. At the very least, a little kindness to the robot could come in handy in a theoretical robot takeover.
