MOULTRIE, Ga. – Planning, progressing and serving don’t stop, not even in the face of a global pandemic.

The Moultrie-Colquitt County Parks and Recreation Authority is looking deeply into the future, a future where the community is a hub of sports tourism. That’s travel ball tournaments, major swimming meets and something the area is already familiar with: USA Diving competitions.

The more revenue brought in from the out-of-town visitors watching their youngsters play ball at Magnolia Park or the Goff Complex, the less the Authority would need to collect from the local taxpayer. And more revenue means more offerings – not to mention better looking offerings – for the Authority’s primary audience, those local taxpayers and their families.

When most of life shut down as COVID-19 became a serious issue in March, the Parks and Recreation Authority had to make its adjustments as well with the upcoming spring youth sports seasons. Also, there were major renovation projects already on the way at the Southwest Memorial Pool and the Moose Moss Aquatic Center. Those renovations commenced as planned and are still ongoing even with the weather turning colder in December. Some new features are already visible, like a colorful splash area, while others are not as visible, like new storage areas and improved filtration systems.

Greg Icard is the current executive director for MCCPRA, a position he first assumed in February. He said the agency tried to follow suit with the Colquitt County School System and its pandemic shutdown plans. They were dealing with numerous uncertainties, but Icard said they took every precaution for social distancing. That included delaying the start of those spring seasons. The Georgia Parks and Recreation Association had already canceled all District and State championship tournaments.

“We were at meetings with other Parks and Rec entities across our region. Many of them were canceling and refunding people,” said Icard. “Once we got to where we were allowed to have certain numbers of people congregate, we were able to have a baseball and softball season. We canceled T-ball because of their age. Keeping 4-, 5-, 6-year olds separated was probably going to be more difficult. We played all of June and some of July.”

The activities calendar for the summer also included tennis camps. They had all the sanitation products required for the dugouts and equipment.

“A lot of places canceled football,” said Icard. But again for MCCPRA it was watching what the Georgia High School Association would allow, and when it green-lighted the sport so did the recreation level locally. Icard said there were lower participation numbers – possibly due to the pandemic – but they included fall softball and T-ball leagues that did show a good turnout.

Beyond the local offerings, Icard said once Gov. Brian Kemp lifted some state restrictions at the start of July MCCPRA resumed the business of hosting travel baseball tournaments every weekend. It’s been a constant occurrence up until the present time, but only two are scheduled for the next five weeks due to the Christmas holiday. Icard said come January it will be competition every weekend again.

“Our concessions staff will wear gloves, wear masks, social distance, spray down with a sanitize solution,” said Icard.

Back to the local scene, MCCPRA is moving forward with youth basketball and good numbers.

“We are trying to increase our participation rates,” said Icard. “We want more and more children involved in the activities we offer.”

Economic impact, needs assessment

Again, the pandemic put much on hold, but it gave these recreation officials time to think about what they do and plan what they can do.

“We are able to draw in large numbers of people (to tournaments and meets) pretty consistently throughout the year,” said Icard. The travel ball tournaments usually take a full day on a weekend while a diving competition can last several days, which includes practices. “Once (the SW pool) is completed, we will be one of the more updated – probably the premiere – areas to do swim meets in our region.

“That really necessitated the need for us to look at what we do as an organization and how we plan. We wanted to really be able to quantify what our activities generate in the community. We want to look at what the real data shows. If we have a baseball or softball tournament, for instance, we know we will have between 30 to 50 teams – (tournaments) are getting bigger – 11 players per team plus all the family. On a Saturday you’ll have 2,000 people at our parks. As long as they are winning games they are here from 7:30 in the morning until midnight.”

By being able to quantify the economic impact, Icard said they can show the community how it can offset the millage rates that make up the general budget.

“We know there’s a certain amount of money we’re hoping to benefit the community with,” said Icard. “We just don’t know exactly what that is yet. We’ll be working with Valdosta State … they’re reviewing it starting sometime in January.”

The MCCPRA will provide information on number of tournaments and average attendance, and when VSU completes the study – which Icard said could take two months – they can pass on the results to the local governments and citizens.

“At the same time, we are just now starting a needs assessment,” said Icard. “The way I see it playing out is we’re doing an economic impact analysis and we’re going to do a needs assessment through a consultant that specializes in parks and rec entities. We will be able to get a good (community) sample based on our population.”

And he said that population is growing, something that could be proven by new Census numbers.

The assessment will involve a survey sent out by a third-party group aimed at 4,000 minimum, and Icard wants to see a mix of socio-economic levels represented and learn what people are interested in. Some people, for example, are simply looking for leisure activities and not organized sports.

“We don’t want it to be where we are just focusing on one group,” said Icard. “We want it to be a very diverse and broad group of people we can sample and get information back to see where we need to go in the future.”

Icard said this should be completed by the end of February and a final report made in early March. This survey, Icard said, won’t be multiple choice but open-ended questions. He said some surveys can be made to give a desired result, but he wants to find out what the community wants to see in the future.

“It will be a scientific, very proven research methodology,” said Icard. “It will allow us to have sound information. It’s not just something we made up, what we think it might be. It won’t be where they ask do you have a positive or negative feeling or if you were rating from 1 to 10 in reference to, say, cleanliness of bathrooms or the gyms.”

Information from the needs assessment will take MCCPRA to the next step, the strategic planning. Unless COVID becomes a bigger issue or other glitches arise, Icard said the goal is to have a three-year plan in May.

“We are working on how we want to approach that,” said Icard. “What kind of format we want to use. There are all kinds of ways you want to lay it out. I have a method I have used with other strategic plans. We are reviewing other ones to make sure we do something we think is appropriate for our organization.”

Renovations

Paint, fences, shrubbery, flooring.

MCCPRA is doing it all to make its facilities look nicer. The real heavy-duty hard hat work is taking place at the Memorial Pool and Moose Moss diving well.

These projects were in the planning stages going back two years.

“That pool was no longer sufficient as far as keeping the water clean,” said Icard about the Memorial pool. “That’s why it was closed and drained. It had to be updated for health reasons. Same thing with the diving well. It was not going to meet the code in the future. When it was built it didn’t have the capacity to do the return on the flow rate it needed.

“It became a bigger project and evolved into more of a project than originally anticipated. It was all required and necessary in order to utilize these facilities like they should be.”

Icard said the Moss Center is one of only three diving facilities in Georgia that features a tower (the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech are the others). He added the well’s dryland facility also differentiates it from others in the nation.

“With all these upgrades, we decided to add an additional splash pad to (Memorial),” said Icard. “You have an additional draw in the summertime. We already have in Northwest a kiddie pool, which is similar to a splash pad … it’s about a foot-and-a-half deep with some water features. In the splash pad there’ll be no water that sits. It runs off the pad through drains then is filtered through, cleaned and sent back through. The splash pad will have additional play features.”

For other MCCRPA facilities, Icard said there are upgrades planned at Northwest’s pool, redoing the deck and the kiddie pool. This pool remained open after school started for weekend use, including Sundays for the first time.

“We spent a lot of time during (the shutdown) working on capital issues,” said Icard. “Renovating. Painting. Updating lights. We painted Shaw Gym, put new LED lights in Shaw. We put new LED lights in Meredith Gym. We don’t have those old lights that pull tons of power and make noises.”

Springtime projects include Shaw’s and Meredith’s floors that have been in place for more than four decades. Icard said COVID cut into their time needed to look at different flooring options. He said they have a new staff person to handle maintenance, which allows them to save on labor costs instead contracting the work.

“We are going to start renovating all the bathrooms at the complexes,” said Icard. “We updated the bathrooms at the aquatic facility. We will have a consistent look at all our locations … the same colors, blue and grey. Except for Shaw Gym, we painted it the colors of what it was when it was the old high school.

“We are going to start replacing all our shelters at our parks. We are going to be adding a shelter at William Bryant Park. It has nothing there currently. That will be something we do in-house. We are trying to be as proactive with that kind of thing as possible.”