City ready to take another run at Miracle League

City ready to take another run at Miracle League

Adaptive field looking for special needs athletes

news@theeveningtimes.com

The adaptive sports field at Tilden Rodgers Park remains without a local team, league or tournament. The parks department had one time hoped to attract a Miracle League tournament to generate local interest among adaptive athletes in the area. The field was intended for players with special needs. Interest meetings held last year failed to form a league or field a single team to call the $400,000 field home.

The City of West Memphis put $100,000 of a bond fund for parks and recreation toward the project that was matched by Arkansas Parks and Tourism, but the lion’s share came form the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation.

Parks Director Lorenzo Parker heard a plan to take a second swing at a start-up during the April Parks Commission meeting.

Local interest in organizing team play caught the attention of commissioners and they also heard hopes that special playground equipment might increase the drawing power of the park. Parker recapped the considerations after the commission meeting April 12.

“We had guest, Paul Johnson, he has volunteered to organize and get our adaptive sports league going,” reported Parker. He has actually gone to Jonesboro and watch their league play. He has already come up with a couple ideas for us to promote the league and get some more involvement in it.”

The Parks Department hopes to turn a double play. Putting on an exhibition is the first part with an inclusive playground structure to heighten attraction for the Cal Ripken field in Tilden Rodgers Park.

“One thing we are discussing is having a big event and bringing in the team from Jonesboro to let the community see them play,” said Parker. “That should spark some interest in it.

“We are going to look into grants or funding for a playground to put adjacent to the adaptive field,” continued Parker. “It would be a playground especially for children with special needs. For example swings that support an entire wheel chair and ramps up to the slide instead of steps, a totally handicap accessible playground.”

That all depends on some outside funding according to the Parks Director.

“We know that anytime you do something like that it is going to be fairly expensive,” said Parker, “So that’s why we want to do some grant research.”

By John Rech