January 2022 - Parks & Recreation - 44

TRENDS
" Park and recreation agencies are
ideally positioned to be the multisports
providers, " she says.
Josh
Medeiros,
superintendent
of Parks, Recreation, Youth and
Community Services in Bristol,
Connecticut, says his agency has
seen the same decline in participation
in youth sports and is now looking
at some non-traditional sports.
For example, they are supporting
mountain
biking
for
youth
and
have partnered with Bike Bristol, a
nonprofit volunteer group, to build a
pump track for kids and teens.
Medeiros says that they have instituted
pop-up parks in neighborhood
parks around the city where they
host mini-golf days, family game
nights and other recreational activities
for kids who most likely have
never experienced these games and
sports before. He agrees they have
seen a big drop off in participation
in youth team sports. " [COVID-19]
didn't help, either, " he says.
Pickleball Ascendant
When does a niche recreational
sport go big time? Just trace the
history of pickleball since its inception
in 1965. Now named as the
fastest growing sport in America
by The Economist, pickleball is estimated
to have more than 4 million
people playing it annually. With its
exponential growth has come stories
and videos of celebrity players
and pickleball influencers. The best
part about pickleball is its universality.
Virtually anyone can play,
and schools and recreation centers
are expanding opportunities
for
youth to play in a variety of indoor
and outdoor settings.
Is This a Thing? Smashing
Pumpkins in Parks?
In October and November, recreation
programmers on NRPA Connect
expressed keen interest in pumpkins
- smashing pumpkins, that is.
Brad
Muckenhirn, recreation
supervisor in Cottage Grove,
Minnesota, says his agency's
first-ever Pumpkin Chuckin
Party was an unqualified success.
" We were
blown away by the
support from the community.
We encouraged the public [to]
dress up in their Halloween
costumes and bring their afterHalloween
pumpkins to the party.
We set up the event on a hill and
had bowling pins to knock down,
jumps to jump and a repurposed
playground
slide
to launch
pumpkins into the air. The whole
point was just to enjoy watching
your pumpkins smash. We took
two one-ton trucks full of smashed
pumpkins to our town compost
facility at the day's end. We are
already talking about how we
might close down a city street next
year and have pumpkin races -
like pinewood derbies, you know
- pumpkins with wheels. "
Kristen Herndon, facility and
aquatics coordinator for Greensboro,
North
Carolina,
says they
held their first Pumpkin Smash
this year on the first Saturday after
Greensboro, North Carolina, held an
event where participants brought pumpkins
to smash with hammers or shoot
from a slingshot.
44 Parks & Recreation |
J ANUAR Y 2 0 22 | PARK S ANDRECRE AT ION . OR G
PHOTO COURTESY OF KRISTEN HERNDON/GREENSBORO PARKS AND RECREATION
January 2022 - Parks & Recreation

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