Our Story
Above Par Tech started with a simple visit to a Des Moines area golf course in 2017.
Sam Schmidt grew up on a family farm in Eastern Iowa and graduated from Iowa State University with an Agriculture Systems Technology degree. After working for John Deere in their GPS and technology division he left to work for a startup company testing magnets and their effects on spray applications. A customer visit to a golf course led to a surprising revelation, technologies that were widely adopted within agriculture were not widely used within the turf market. A couple months later Above Par Tech was created.
The original plan was to install GPS spray controllers on customers’ existing machines. The first few customer machines were retrofitted, then COVID struck in early 2020. A local course was given a 2 year lead time for their sprayer to arrive before a retrofit could be installed, so instead of wait, Sam enlisted the help of his father to make the first HP200.
After a few iterations of the HP200, the HP300 was created and Zach Bartlett joined the team. Zach Bartlett was a college friend of Sam’s and had been a test engineer at Ag Leader Technologies before joining Above Par Tech. The HP500 and River300 were added along the way and Nathan Tremel joined the team. Nathan also has a precision agriculture background.
GLK Turf Solutions became our first dealer in 2021 and with their help, we have added several others over time. In 2024 a partnership with Turfwerks occurred and the Husqvarna Automower line was added to the portfolio. We have now shipped sprayers to 25 different states and even Canada.
