Teaching youth how to identify, handle, and overcome it

By John Engh 

One of the great exercises that the National Alliance for Youth Sports offers in its Academy for Youth Sports Administrators is to make a list of all the reasons that sports are great for kids. We’ve done this with groups hundreds of times through the years, and the lists are nearly identical. Making friends, socialization, learning about working together, sportsmanship, handling winning and losing, developing confidence—the list goes on and on to show how the power of sport can be so beneficial to a child’s development. 

Learn how to engage your audience

By Silvana Clark

At a parks and recreation conference, I watched a speaker begin his presentation by saying, “Soooooo, I want to tell you a story.” He then went on to relate how his daughter had all the latest toys, games, and age-appropriate video games. He described many of these in detail. His story was punctuated with unnecessary details about the hair color of his daughter’s five Barbie dolls. He continued, explaining how his daughter frequently complained of being bored. At this point, his story was eight minutes into a 45-minute keynote. I watched people start to squirm and lose interest. Three minutes later, he came to his conclusion. He described how his daughter went outside, lay on the grass and enjoyed looking at all the shapes in the clouds. His point? Kids should spend time outdoors. It’s a nice story. A nice story if it was condensed to two or three minutes. 

Providing options to support a lifetime love of the game

By Gerry Healey, Brock Atwell, and Sue Omanson

Given the right parameters, softball is a team sport that can be played and enjoyed for a lifetime. Located in the Chicago area, the Naperville Park District has found that offering adults ages 19 to 90+ the opportunity to play the sport they love on a schedule that works for them is a winning combination.

Removing barriers so all can have access to musical instruments

By Sue Murray

There are times when two projects coincide and achieve a perfect outcome. A prime example was in 2020 when the Modesto ROTARY Club (MoRo) in California was preparing to celebrate its centennial year. MoRo has supported numerous local projects, from constructing a pavilion at a downtown park and planting trees to helping the city convert an old railroad spur into a bike trail. But for this anniversary, MoRo chose an ambitious and memorable project to help beautify and revitalize the area and also improve the quality of life of its citizens. Meanwhile, Modesto’s Gallo Center for the Arts (GCA) was looking to convert a small, unused, grassy area in front of its building into a public-recreation area—a place to improve diversity by attracting the young, old, able, disabled, wealthy, and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Lynn Dickerson, CEO of the GCA and Phil Trompetter, MoRo president, explain how the organizations’ approaches came together for a perfect outcome.

Skatepark-development pitfalls to avoid

By Alec Beck

While there are many challenges in developing a public skatepark, a few common pitfalls can be easily avoided. Skating around these snares can help create the most popular recreation facility in town as quickly and efficiently as possible.

L.A. County takes a data-driven approach to reimagine conservation

By Clement Lau

On December 6, 2022, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously adopted the 2022 Parks Needs Assessment Plus (PNA+) Final Report as its 30x30 plan. The goal is to conserve 30 percent of lands and coastal waters by 2030 to address climate change and protect biodiversity. The federal government and various states—including California—have committed to achieving this goal.

Building resilient parks one ingredient at a time

By Cheri Ruane

“Stone Soup” is a European folk story in which hungry strangers, carrying nothing but a cooking pot filled with water and a stone arrive in a town and convince each of the townspeople to share a small amount of their food to make a meal that everyone enjoys. It is a lesson on the value of sharing and the potential synergy borne of collaboration. When building a resilient, public open space, the process is not that different. It often begins with one municipal department and an idea (the cooking pot). Slowly but surely, more departments, agencies, funding sources, stakeholders, and others becom

Outdoor, play-based learning supports school curriculums and unlocks new worlds for children

By Jefferey Spivey

Sanitization and public-health partnerships can keep park visitors safe

By Jefferey Spivey

Splash pads are a hallmark of summertime family fun for communities across the country. Typically free to use and open to the public, they’re an accessible and affordable way to keep children entertained when school’s out. Many parents also look to splash pads as a safer alternative to pools—visitors can engage in relatively carefree play without water-safety concerns. But that doesn’t mean splash pads are without risks. For park-goers and park officials overseeing splash pads, recreational water illnesses are an urgent, ongoing concern. 

Instead of focusing on fake

By Ron Ciancutti

Most days I take the same on-ramp at the same highway intersection. On this particular day, I was greeted by a giant orange sign that warned me of a “Flagman Ahead.” There wasn’t. In fact, the area looked like construction was going to begin because of the machinery parked all over, but there were no workers in sight. Perhaps they were just “staging” the job site, but shouldn’t they have waited to put the “Flagman Ahead” sign up until it really applied? It was almost two weeks before a flagman was on-site, and by that time probably everyone was ignoring the sign.