Adult Soccer Players Preempting Neighborhood Grassy Play Space
The Recreation Commission on November 16, took up the issue of large groups of primarily adult male soccer players taking over the grassy play space at Beach and Havens. The games have been noted to start as early as 7:00 a.m. Typically, the fields are divided in half, allowing four teams to use the space at one time. By City regulation, the fields cannot be reserved. The goal has been for casual, drop-in use by neighborhood residents.
Parking, noise, preemption of children’s play, and wear and tear on the fields have presented problems. The Recreation Commission plans to continue to monitor the issue to see if education will solve the problem or if monitors will need to be present during certain periods.
The use at Beach, at least, has been regular use by a large group of non residents. They play a pretty regular Sunday game there. The observations of the hired monitor were not correct.
The Recreation Commission addressed use restrictions at Dracena and Beach – Havens is under PUSD authority – but did discuss the recent fight at Havens. Unless staff has continued the program, the monitor is on hiatus until spring. Monitoring concluded Sundays at 3:00 and was intermittent so it may not have detected this game. But the monitor may also have considered this game to be acceptable – games of 11 adults are allowed without permit. The game I saw yesterday at 4:30 was 14 adults and was using 2/3’s of the field. I called PPD. Until the monitoring program starts again in spring, residents need to call PIedmont Police (420-3000) and report large games – PPD has enforcement responsibility of the field use restrictions.
Definitely more than 11 adults very regularly.
Last Saturday around 5pm I observed at Linda Beach a full-field game with 18 participants. 2 were clearly teens, the rest probably over 21. There was a local father and 2 kids on the sidelines. At one point field players asked the children not to encroach onto the field for their safety.
Rick – thanks for the observation. Was the group using the whole field?
You have to call PPD in these situations – 420-3000 – they have enforcement responsibility for all use restrictions and will respond if called. Not the most efficient way to enforce the rules – drive-by enforcement would be better and make the field more available for residents.