Food service requires healthy, nutritious menus prepped in clean, safe environments

By Jason Schaitz

Food service at camp can be essential or nonessential depending on the type of program. Whether the service is already offered or being considered, some factors should be kept in mind

How camps can practice inclusivity for all youth

By Hannah Howard

How should leaders ensure that everyone who comes to a camp or recreation program feels supported, safe, and seen? Likely, most program directors are already trying to ensure safe spaces for all participants. But what else can they do to intentionally create affirming spaces for gender-nonbinary and gender-expansive youth, a group that has been historically excluded in the camping world?

Steps to keep recreational facilities safe from carbon monoxide poisoning this summer

By Eric Spacek

Ah, the joys of summer camps and recreational activities—eager youngsters learning new sports, campers forming lifelong friendships…and dozens of children ending up in the emergency room because of carbon monoxide poisoning. Those hospital visits are every recreation manager’s nightmare.

Three Fantastic In-Service Trainings

By Christopher Thurber

You’ve invested time and creativity into pre-season staff training, perhaps combining some pre-arrival video training modules from ExpertOnlineTraining.com with some creative on-site workshops and scenarios. Thanks to these efforts, the summer has hummed along, but now it’s midsummer. Are staff members continuing to improve each day? The best learning happens on the job, so why not let the entire staff benefit from participant feedback and individual staff members’ growth?

Leagues must prepare volunteers for worst-case scenarios

By John Engh

Recently, I came across a story that really hit home. The event happened on a local youth baseball field near our office. Most likely, however, it struck a chord because the story involved a 6-year-old boy playing baseball, and it brought me back to my baseball-coaching days.

Leaders can help employees thrive by observing how they feel about their duties

By Ron Ciancutti

I have two sons. One excelled in football and the other in rugby. Both received a college scholarship based on their abilities in the respective sports. Both were average students with a typical 18-year-old’s indifference to their future careers and goals.

Leveraging management technology to increase customer satisfaction

By Brian Stapleton

Parks and recreation departments are critical to the overall well-being of communities. Residents are encouraged to get physical and mental exercise through classes, activities, and equipment provided by these departments. Group events help facilitate a connection between community members, giving them opportunities for meeting and socializing with neighbors and reducing feelings of isolation. Programming for children teaches young residents how to make health and wellness part of their everyday lives.

R. J. Thomas Mfg. Co. steps into the national spotlight on popular TV show

By Justin Jorgensen

Cherokee, Iowa-based R. J. Thomas Mfg. Co. was recently featured on "World's Greatest," a half-hour TV show that focuses on telling “the story behind the story.” The segment (in episode #361) premiered on Bloomberg TV in February 2024, but is now available online for on-demand viewing. 

Festivals need thorough emergency-action plans for unpredictable summer weather

By Kitty Weiner

Summer has arrived in full force, and so have residents’ desires to get outside. Be it lounging in parks, walking through neighborhoods, riding bikes, or going to festivals, there’s plenty to draw locals to the outdoors.

Using the concept to aid in protecting natural and historic resources

By Harold J. Nolan

The conservation and/or preservation of both recreation- and historic-based resources begins with the unifying concept of environmental management. Two interdependent thrusts turn that concept into results. The first includes managing recreation, park, and historic resources in a way that provides both a quality user-experience as well as the creation of a quality environmental base. Second, the process must convey interpretative knowledge to the public. Simply stated, the protection of special resources is one of either physical conservation or interpretive conservation.

Public engagement drives multimillion-dollar renovation in City Lake Park

By Dave Toms

The year was 2017. Like a time-worn photograph, City Lake Pool showed its age. The 1.25 million-gallon “cement pond” was quickly becoming obsolete in an era of lazy rivers, water cannons, and colorful dumping buckets. It was due for a significant renovation. However, contemplating change was no small feat, as both the pool and its namesake park had become integral to the City of High Point’s cultural identity over the past century, making any transformation a challenge.

Safe spraygrounds are necessary for young patrons

By Nikki Kelly

Waterparks are the rock stars of summer, with their towering slides and lazy rivers attracting thrill-seekers of all ages. But let's be real—they're not always the best fit for the smallest adventurers. With height restrictions and associated fees, waterparks can sometimes leave toddlers and younger school-aged kids high and dry.

A hydrogeologist offers perspective on water-management solutions

By Rob F. Good Jr.

Golf course irrigation has become a highly engineered science of pumps, piping, sprinkler heads, controls, automation, and telemetry, configured to maximize efficiency and conservation. Advances in system design have been driven by architect and player expectations for optimum turf conditions and the endless struggle between turf disease and fertility. Decisions about application rates, frequency, duration, and coverage have become more technical, with the added pressures of balancing expectations, performance, and environmental awareness. All of these factors have forced a keen focus on the most important resource for any irrigation system-water.

The case for restorative waterparks

By Karen Fischer

One hot summer day when I was five years old, my mother broke her ankle coming down a slide in a busy waterpark. In the chaos that ensued, kids crowded around me, stretchers carried my mother off over my head, and I couldn’t find the family friends with whom we’d traveled to the park. It was a nightmare.

A horticultural oasis reimagined for music and play

By Jody Ashfield

Botanical gardens are often thought of as serene settings, spaces for horticulturalists and garden enthusiasts to discover and research flora and fauna. Research and education at botanical gardens around the world have been vital in protecting endangered plant species. However, a botanical garden in Florida has started to reimagine what these gardens can look like by creating an innovative space in which play and music coexist alongside the important horticultural work the gardens carry out.

The Land sports complex features flexible designs for a vast range of activities

By Nick Henninger

The Land is a premier sports, recreation, and events complex currently under construction in Saraland, Ala. The $72-million park spreads across 100 acres and will offer a wide range of indoor and outdoor amenities. The goal of the facility is to service the local community, but the space will also provide opportunities for regional tournament play, bringing additional revenue from sports tourism to the local economy.

How the Oregon coast became accessible to everyone

By Melissa Hart

In 1966, having witnessed how property owners cordoned off private beaches in California and Washington, Oregon Governor Tom McCall alerted the media and jumped into a helicopter. He disembarked outside a Cannon Beach hotel and lobbied for public ownership of the coast from sea to vegetation lines on dry, sandy beaches. McCall signed The Beach Bill into law on July 6, 1967, declaring Oregon’s beaches accessible to everyone.

The Marina Park Sailing and Boating Center makes watersports accessible to all

By Gale Nye Pinckney

“We giggled like kids when we got back to the dock. We had that much fun!” That’s how a longtime instructor described a recent ocean sailing class at Marina Park in the City of Newport Beach, California. “The wind was blowing hard, and we all worked well together as a team steering the boat through the big puffs of wind. The thrill of being on the water just never gets old!”  

Is your community ready for a parkour park?

By Heidi Lemmon

Parkour has been around for centuries and provides a full-body workout, which has led to the development of current fitness trails and military obstacle courses. Modern parkour consists of daredevils leaping between buildings, somersaulting off walls, and scaling tall buildings. This doesn’t really sound like an activity a recreation and parks director would be interested in, but it does sound exactly like a skatepark proposal from the 1990s: a wild idea presented by a ragtag group of kids and young adults to duplicate city obstacles for use in a public park. 

Free fitness programming helps residents rediscover Jacksonville’s parks

By Dan Biederman and Greer Gavin

Riverfront Parks Conservancy (RPC), the nonprofit responsible for the activation of riverfront parks in downtown Jacksonville, Florida, retained the placemaking firm Biederman Redevelopment Ventures (BRV) in June 2023 to plan and implement free public-programming. 

Equity, accessibility, and variety attract teens to aquatic pipeline

By Jefferey Spivey

Though no two parks and recreation departments are the same, many seem to be stumped by the same problem – creating aquatic programming for teens.

This demographic is especially vulnerable to peer pressure, with friends and trends dictating how they spend their time. Today’s teens are also digital natives, with large portions of their lives centered around being online, be it gaming, social media, or other modes of media consumption. Hanging out at the local pool pales in comparison to what’s happening in their feeds.

Energized staff, maintenance, and planning are essential for strong operations

By Brian Hill and Sophia Young 

With proper preparation, the outdoor pool season will start out strong, but keeping up the momentum month after month can become a challenge. Lifeguard staff may begin to experience burnout, the water chemical balance can change, reducing its effectiveness, and unplanned maintenance issues may arise. Before Fourth of July fireworks signal that it’s midsummer, facility managers must be proactive and mentally prepared. Make plans now to perform a midsummer evaluation on pool operations, and be ready to adjust accordingly to end the season on a high note.

How aquatic group-exercise classes enhance lifelong health

By Haley Ragan

Health is the most important aspect in life. An individual’s health allows one to experience life freely and make the most of it. Holistic wellness considers multidimensional aspects of wellness. It encourages people to think about physical, mental, emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual aspects. Some people find their stride to health through yoga, running, or cardio fitness, while others dive into the pool of fitness in their own way.

Investing in campers builds a bridge to create leaders 

By Katie Ridinger

The Counselors in Training (CIT) program—a camp-leadership initiative for 7th and 8th graders that began in summer 2023—was the beginning of a program that will last for years. Younger campers began asking where the CITs were every day and expressing their dream to someday be one themselves. Teenagers were using their phones to look up games and other ideas for specific age groups. A group of older campers, who could be trusted to sit at a table all on their own, began bringing fresh ideas, and new energy. Seeing how the CITs took the leap to lead is evidence there is a bright future at Discovery Day Camp in Valparaiso, Ind. 

Sparing parks and open spaces from the worst of the damage caused by wildfires

By Cassie Olgren

Monument, Colo., is a small, historic town sitting in the shadow of the eastern-most edge of the Rocky Mountains. Locals refer to this area as the Front Range. Living along the Front Range affords residents spectacular views and sunsets, proximity to countless outdoor amenities, and an easy commute between Colorado’s two largest cities, Denver and Colorado Springs. This area can be quite appealing to a jaded urban-dweller, and thus has seen an explosion of growth in the last decade. But there is a reality that many new residents are not prepared for—wildfire. A large percentage of the residents of the Front Range live in a zone called the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI). These towns and residences are situated among forested and natural areas.