Mapleton town manager
reviews summer recreation program
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
MAPLETON – It was back in March when municipal officials in Mapleton, Castle Hill and Chapman recommended to cut the recreation department’s budget and eliminate some of the programs. However, after the town reports came out and people read about the proposed change, many parents began voicing their disapproval and pledged to support the rec department by enrolling their children in the various summer activities.
Now that the summer rec program has concluded for the year, Town Manager Martin Puckett has been reviewing the numbers to see if parents followed through on their promises.
“We did see a difference in our figures. I thought we would have had more daytime participants than last year due to all the parents that came out in support of the rec program, but instead of the daytime figures increasing, we saw an increase in our nighttime and afternoon baseball programs,” he said.
“In our Little League afternoon program, which is for 8- to 12-year-olds, last year we had 45 participants and this year we had 61, so that was a pleasant surprise seeing that many more kids,” Puckett said. “Those coaches are completely volunteers and they do the planning, organizing and all the coaching. The other success story we had was establishing a Pony League, which was for 13- to 16-year-olds. It’s been at least five years since the town had a Pony League and we had 13 kids involved, so going from nothing last year to a league with 13 players was really good. For a start-up team they did a fantastic job; I was really proud of them.”
Puckett said the total number of kids in all of the recreational activities – daytime and nighttime combined – was 124 this year, up two from last year.
“We only increased by two kids even with all the changes,” he said, “but we did offer three new programs this year – volleyball, flag football and fun and games, which included everything from soccer, tag and even board games – and those were very popular. Fun and games was one of our most successful programs; we had 33 children sign up.
“Our baseball figures were down. We had about 20 less children sign up for our daytime baseball program, and our pool was down by 50 percent in terms of swimming lessons, which I thought was quite surprising,” said Puckett. “We definitely had warmer weather than last year and I was hoping that would lead to an increase in lessons, but it didn’t. However, we did see more people using the pool for ‘free swim.’”
The town also had less children sign up for the traditional summer rec activities.
“Things like baseball, tennis, arts and crafts, and swimming lessons were all down from last year,” said Puckett, “but we did see more people sign up for the volleyball, flag football and fun and games. It seems that parents did like seeing the new activities that we put together.
“I think a lot of people take advantage of our partnership with the Presque Isle Recreation & Parks Department where we – the town – pay the non-resident tuition fee. A lot of parents came to me and said they really like being able to send their kids to Presque Isle for some of their programs which are different than what we offer,” he said. “Although our figures only increased by two children, I did see a lot more children participate in recreational activities between us and the city of Presque Isle, so that’s a success, too.”
Puckett expects to offer the same programs again next year, but will try to offer “more instruction and skill building than we’ve have in the past three years.”
“The problem we constantly face is our instructors are of high school age and as they get older, they go to college, and we end up having to rebuild our staff,” he said. “This was a rebuilding year for our staff, and I’m hoping to have more lesson plans for all the different activities we have next year.
“We are going to tinker with the Little League schedule; we’re going to add another week so we have some extra time for make-up games,” said Puckett. “Another thing we’re going to explore is maybe combining some of the age groups. For example, we didn’t have a lot of participation with the 5- and 6-year-olds so we may combine them with the 7- and 8-year-olds. That way we’ll have a bigger group of kids. I saw a lot of times where there were only five or six kids within an age group and that made it really hard if you wanted to play a mock game with so few kids. However, all in all it was a good year. We’re very happy with the partnership and cooperation with Presque Isle, and it was a good year. We’re continually retooling and trying to make the program a little bit better.”
