For Russellville Parks and Recreation Department director Chad Sears, the name of the game is growth.
Since Sears took over the position nearly 11 years ago, he has seen a significant amount of growth in his department, especially in the area of youth sports.
The department’s recreational youth basketball league started in early January. Sears says 2017 has been one of the biggest years for youth basketball since he took over the department.
“We have about 35 teams playing basketball,” he said. “That’s probably the most we’ve had since I’ve been here.”
Sears contributes the expansion to the increasing number of younger kids participating in the league.
“In particular, we’ve seen more of the smaller kids playing,” he said. “In the past, we’ve combined six-, seven-, and eight-year-olds. This year, we had so many that we had to divide them up.”
Adding more teams creates some scheduling difficulties for Sears and his staff, but the increase in younger and younger participants is a step in the right direction.
“That’s where we want to be,” Sears said. “When you start a program, you want to start with the basics. You want to start with the younger kids because that’s going to be the future of your program.”
While youth basketball continues to be a staple of the department’s provided activities, Sears is looking to give adults a way to participate, too.
“We’re going to try to have a three-on-three blacktop tournament in early April at the old tennis courts and at the Chucky Mullins Center,” he said. “That’s an adult program that we’re going to try to add for basketball.”
Basketball is not the department’s only bloomer. As the recreational basketball season continues, Sears is turning his focus to upcoming seasons. The two programs fast approaching are baseball and softball.
“Once basketball starts we’ve got to begin preparing for baseball and softball that’s coming up,” Sears said. “We’ve got a big demand for baseball and softball here.”
The department has already begun two projects, including the rebuilding of Hal Kirby, Jr. field, designed to help bolster the baseball and softball programs.
“Our goal is to finish up Hal Kirby (field) and have it ready for the start of the season first,” Sears said. “We’ve also got the Southside park cleaned up really well and the plan is to implement two additional fields over there. Those will be practice fields for now, but we’ve got the dirt and everything we need for that project down there.”
Sears added that the field at the Chucky Mullins Center should also be ready for use in the spring, as well.
Looking down the road towards the fall season, Sears says that is where he has seen the most exponential growth and addition of programs during his time as director.
“When I got here, I think in the fall all we had was soccer and fall baseball was in its infancy stages,” he said. “Over the past 11 years we’ve added fall softball, the fall baseball program has grown, and we’ve added indoor soccer and flag football.”
Sears says indoor soccer for the younger participants and flag football have taken off in popularity over the last few years, but he is optimistic the outdoor soccer program will gain more traction with the addition of Russellville High School’s new varsity soccer programs.
“With the high school fielding a new soccer team, we want our soccer programs to feed into the high school program,” he said. “We want that to be successful and we don’t want these kids to be lost when they move up and try and play in high school.”
As the director of the department, Sears reaps the credit for the health of the recreational programs, but he says his staff plays a big role in the success.
“My staff does a great job of getting in the schools and promoting our programs,” he said. “It’s hard work and we have a lot of hard-working people here at the department. Without the full-time and part-time employees, there would be no department.”
Even with all the growth Sears and the Russellville Parks and Recreation Department have seen over the last decade, there is no desire to slow down.
“We want to continue to grow even more,” Sears said. “We want to be the best parks and rec. department in this area and continue to serve the community. My goal is to work as hard as I can to do that.”
