With August just a week away, the return of fall sports is quickly approaching for Sampson County Parks and Rec.
Between now and Aug. 17, volleyball, flag football, and tackle football are all available for sign-up. The age ranges vary between each sport, with flag football and volleyball available for kids ages 4 to 6, 7 to 9, and 10-13. For tackle football, kids ages 10-12 will be able to participate; however, all children must be the minimum age of 10 before Aug. 31 and weigh at least 60 pounds in order to play in the league. The 60-pound limit for kids participating in tackle football is designed to be a safety precaution.
“It’s kind of hard,” explained Daniel Covington, recreation manager for the county rec department. “With 60 pounds and the boys being aged 10 to 12, you can get a whole variation of sizes of kids. You could have a kid that weighs 60 pounds, or a kid that weighs 160 pounds. We just really want them to be safe at the end of the day. That’s another reason why we get our helmets reconditioned every two years to be safe and compliant. Especially when it comes to tackle football, it’s most important to take safety seriously. A lot of people haven’t been happy in the past because we had several kids who might be in that 59-pound range. But if they come back and they weigh in over 60 pounds, that’s just our department policy on the matter. We want to take safety seriously, and that’s the biggest driving factor in regard to the 60-pound rule.”
With three different sports available for the community, kids of all ages have a range of activities that they can take part in for the fall season.
“It’s very diverse,” said Covington. “For volleyball, we offer programs with three different age groups, and we’re looking at adding a fourth one this year for 13- to 15-year-olds, if we have enough interest. For our 4- to 6-year-olds, we do a volleyball clinic where we teach them the fundamentals of the sport. That’s taught by our staff in-house to give them the best possible kind of instruction. It’s the bare basics where the kids can have fun and learn the sport and find a love for the game.”
Each level for the kids rises as the age group gets older for all sports that the county’s Parks and Rec offers. For the 7-to 9-year-olds, they would participate in the Rec’s developmental league, which focuses on helping develop the skills of the game. The competitive league is available for the current oldest group of participants (ages 10-12). Covington has been hoping to see the addition of the 13- to 15-year-olds come soon for volleyball, but a few factors have hindered the idea from coming to fruition.
“We’ve been promoting it for several years; however, we’ve never really had enough kids to make a league,” Covington emphasized. “The league goes hand in hand with the middle school schedules. We’re trying to have the league this year, which we’ll probably open registration a little bit later to not combat with the middle school season. That way, we can let the middle school do their thing, and then we do ours.”
Once registration is over, the assessment period for each sport will begin, along with practices.
“What we try to do is, whenever we have assessments, we bring out every kid that we have registered.”
Covington broke down the process. “For instance, if we have 60 kids signed up for seven-nine flag football, not all 60 kids are going to be on the same team. So we want to come out, assess the kids: have they played flag football before, what age are they, what are their skill levels, things they’re good at, where they can improve. We try to keep the kids together if they’re in the same households, but we also try to split the rest of the kids up so they can meet new people and learn different game styles, so that their experience is different every single time. We try to divide the teams as evenly as possible based on the knowledge that we gain through the assessments.”
The staff tries to take every circumstance into consideration during the assessment period, he said. The overall purpose and goal for this is to not only keep things as fair as possible, but also to ensure that the kids have an enjoyable experience over the fall season.
“I think the biggest thing for the kids that we reach is that you really get to find what each kid is passionate about,” Covington said. “I really want the kids to come out and find a passion of their own. Maybe not every kid is going to enjoy basketball; not everybody would want to play flag football or tackle football. This gives them an insight into what they enjoy the most. Obviously, they could try a little bit of everything, but at the end of the day, they get to find their passion while along the way getting to make memories.”
There is a registration fee required for signing up for the fall season. There are also scholarships available for those who are in need of funds. That money is provided by the Parks and Rec and Monarch Bioenergy, which can be accessed on the Sampson County Parks and Recreation Rec Desk website.