Play ball! All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, or so the saying goes. We work hard and we should play hard. Recreation is good for the soul, not to mention the body. And Alliance's Recreation Department can offer you a wide variety of activities to improve your body and your mind.

The Recreation Department is housed and operates with the city's Parks and Public Lands Department. The departments have been combined for twenty some years now. Currently, the department has three staff persons, Brooke Riley, the Recreation Coordinator, Scott Davis, the Athletic Field Commissioner, and Bonnie Faubel, Administrative Assistant who works for both the recreation and parks departments.

The city's 2002 allocation from the general fund to the Recreation Department is $75,926. The non-profit group, Friends of the Parks, Inc. contributes some funds to the Recreation Department from monies they have raised. When you go out to Silver Park, the brown building just north of the main entrance houses the Parks and Recreation department.

Realtors tell us that when people are looking to relocate to a city, one of the things they look at is the parks and the availability of public recreation for leisure time activities. We have an abundance of leisure time activities to offer here in Alliance. There's adult volleyball, senior fitness, Easter egg hunts, baseball skills competition, tennis lessons, tennis tournaments, volleyball tournaments, adult aerobics, women in sports day, Community Challenge, tennis leagues, baseball and softball leagues, fall fishing derby, NFL Punt, Pass and Kick, haunted hayrides, sports camps, track and field, basketball turkey shoot (huh?), and hunter safety courses.

The recreation department helps out with many community events such as the fireworks on July 4^th and Carnation Days events like the triathlon and the parade. They are part of the reason some of the events go as smoothly as they do.

The Athletic Field Commissioner employed by the recreation department provides upkeep, maintenance and scheduling of the eighteen softball and baseball fields in the city and also the six soccer fields. The department also facilitates the twenty-five tournaments held in the city, including the Hot Stove district, regional and state tournaments at Butler-Rodman Park. At Early Hill they help with the Stark County fastpitch and the national qualifier tournaments. Marlington and Alliance high schools both use the available fields.

There is a huge circle of support from the community for the city's recreation department. Local organizations are very generous in their contributions to the different events sponsored in part by the city's recreation department. This support has enabled the department to offer thirty-two different baseball and softball leagues for all ages.

The department also works with many local groups and also uses the facilities of these groups, like the gymnasium at Stanton and the Alliance Neighborhood Center. If you ask Kim Cox, director of the department, what she wants she will tell you she wants a community based recreation facility. That way she won't have to move the events and programs all over the city wherever she can find room. Lack of funds for that facility is of course the main reason it doesn't exist yet.

If you have any questions about recreation in Alliance or want to donate a couple million dollars to build a community recreation facility, give Kim a call at 330-823-6159.