Travis Murphy, director of the county’s Parks and Recreation Department, said his goal is to increase sports participation and events for seniors.
Murphy presented the information as an update to the Patrick County Board of Supervisors at its January 22 meeting.
As a former athletic director and football and basketball coach, Murphy said he wants to work on teaching the children the knowledge of the games they are playing.
“We’re going to be doing some things in this next year, it’s not going to cost any money to help our coaches to come on board and volunteer their time to coach with knowledge of the game,” he said.
Murphy said football and basketball are going to be his focus because he believes the coaches are doing a pretty good job in baseball and softball.
“I’m going to focus on the ones that I see need a little help,” he said.
There were 10 teams for T-ball, ages three-six for boys and girls, Murphy said, adding there were not enough participants to fill the major league.
“Right now, we’re kind of projecting that we may not have any participants for the major leagues,” he said. “I’m worried about it, but I’m not too worried about it because that is a grade level where you kind of advance into middle school, so I’m kind of fighting that age group for middle school sports.”
For soccer, Murphy said there were 287 participants across four divisions and age groups.
“What we did this year is we rotated the soccer games on Saturdays to all parks that would like to host them, including I.C. DeHart. That gives the parks an opportunity to sell concessions, make a little money,” he said, adding that also will happen this year.
Murphy said activity fees were tapped to buy new jerseys for youngsters participating in football. The jersey colors are representative of the player’s respective school.
Murphy said the Patrick County High School (PCHS) currently plays eight-man football.
“That’s not going to cut it for a high school. I think Parks and Rec Department in sports should be a feeder system into high school sports,” he said.
He believes the department needs to push the older tackle football groups to eight-man football. While this will probably result in fewer teams, Murphy said the teams will go to different places, play 11-man football, and grow that sport for the long term.
In watching coaches this year in football and basketball, Murphy said while he appreciates the volunteer coaches, some may lack knowledge of the game. Murphy said if he sees a need and the coaches don’t have the background, it’s his responsibility to teach them and give them the tools to coach the children better.
“Typically, when we do a coach meeting for each season, the coaches come in, we have the information on how many signups we had, we divide them up, so they take the kids,” he said.
Participation in basketball increased with a total of 411 children playing this season.
“All the schools, they were able to make a little money for their booster clubs,” he said.
When he took the position in March 2023, Murphy said there was a lot of talk about adult softball.
“So, we started adult softball, it was co-ed softball. I was trying to get as many people to participate as possible. It was great. The adults adulted. There were no arguments, they had a lot of fun, and they were just thankful to be on the field to play,” he said.
Murphy also wants to increase adult sports in the county by starting a cornhole league and a flag football league.
“We’re going to try cornhole at the parks this year during the summer. Maybe on a Wednesday night,” he said.
He also wants to increase what Parks and Recreation offers for the county’s senior residents. The “super seniors” have their year planned out with meals at the Hooker Building in Stuart each month.
“They always have a good time, they have musical performers, and different types of meals each month. They get to come about in fellowship with one another, it’s a good time,” he said.
Murphy said Parks and Recreation works to serve and maintain each of the county’s parks, including Fred Clifton Park, and the Rotary Field in Stuart.
The staff or “our trustees go up once a week” to Fred Clifton “regardless of what we’re doing and checks on the park, picks up any trash, and makes sure the railings and everything are sturdy,” he said.
With an increase in highway traffic due to the U.S. 58 expansion project, Murphy noted there’s also some traffic for people stopping to take photos of the Lovers Leap area.
“The other thing is we want to check on the new picnic tables we’ve installed, make sure those haven’t gone over the side. We’ve bolted those down, so we don’t have to worry about that,” he said.
Murphy said the department also mows at Rotary Field and will work on the DeHart Park pool in March or April.
