FRISCO — Across North Texas, many parents are finding park space is at a premium.
Demand for outdoor sports fields has grown so much in recent years, many city parks and athletic fields are maxed out.
“We'd love to have a little bit more room,” says Eric Yates. He coaches flag football to a team of six-year-olds, as part of the Frisco Football League.
“You start putting so many so close together, now going to deal with safety issue of the kids.”
Twice a week for practices, his team shares a strip of grass with at least four other teams at a 33-year-old park in Frisco.
Nearby, a group of boys run drills between a field and a creek.
For these teams, it’s the only available place for them to practice.
“We'd love to have a little bit more room, to be able to really properly simulate a full-sized field, or even a half-sized field,” says Yates. “That's what gets us the most in games: the width difference in the field. We're practicing on such a narrow field.”
Cities across North Texas are straining to catch up with the boom in population and popularity of sports.
In Plano, dry erase boards are crammed with dozens of schedules.
Teams have claimed nearly every field here for every night of the week.
“It's at capacity,” says Plano’s athletic superintendent Ed Voss. “There isn't room for no more, it's at 100 percent capacity.”
The city has 103 turf fields spread out through 81 parks.
To maximize space, Plano sometimes splits the fields and doubles them up with different teams and sports.
Since the competitive leagues get first dibs on fields, every week the city turns away dozens of smaller groups and individuals hoping to reserve fields for pick-up games.
“This is the first time that has occurred,” Voss says. “We've wiggled and played with our inventory and put in as many fields as we possibly can to accommodate everyone's request.”
Space is especially at a premium in Dallas. Studies there say the city needs to double its number of soccer fields to meet demand.
Daniel Huerta, Dallas’ assistant parks director, says the city has only 121 soccer fields. A recent city study says Dallas needs at least 129 more soccer fields.
Huerta says when Dallas was building parks, at the time, it focused on smaller green areas and playgrounds.
“Soccer wasn’t on the radar,” Huerta says.
Now, the city has nearly run out of space to build large athletic complexes with open fields.
Two more parks are in the works, but when finished in 2012 they will add only 20 more soccer fields.
Sports leagues say more parks are needed across North Texas.
In Frisco, David DeMattia runs a youth football league with 2,500 players filling 100 teams.
Volunteers begin scheduling the teams and reserving fields months in advance, with a system more complicated than any playbook.
“It works, but it’s a matrix and it takes a lot of work,” says DeMattia.
The league must share the limited number of fields available with at least three other sports associations; it relies on schools and neighborhood parks to accommodate everyone.
“At the end of the day, we are maxed out, we are maxed out,” he says. “If there's a little magic wand that we could get more fields, we'd take them tomorrow, especially practice fields.”
His football league has quadrupled in size since forming 11 years ago and is only expected to continue growing.
“There's always going to be a need for more fields in Frisco and probably all these other communities around here, because youth sports is only growing at a very accelerated pace.”
Plano directors feel they've built enough parks for its residents, however nearly 40 percent of the people playing on its fields come from other cities.
“We are pushing our inventory to the limit,” says Plano’s park services manager Jim Fox. “People don't recognize the boundaries, so they chose to play where there's good leagues.”
The city charges non-residents more but allows everyone to play.
Cities like Frisco, however, limit the number of outsiders allowed on its fields.
The six major sporting leagues that use city fields must have 80% of its players live in Frisco.
Directors say that rule along with a sophisticated scheduling system has helped manage demand.
“I still think there's areas available,” says Frisco’s parks director Rick Wieland, “but it may not necessarily meet what they would prefer.”
Frisco is planning a $3 million dollar expansion at its new B.F. Phillips community park that should allow more teams to play on its fields, but directors say there are no plans to build new parks in the near future.
“I believe we meet or exceed the minimal practice levels of all of the teams we currently have,” Wieland says.
However, it’s left coaches like Eric Yates worried how much longer before there's no place to play.
“It’s not the ideal condition,” he says. “We'd love to have a little bit more space, but right now it's all we got to deal with so we're making the best out of it.”
E-mail jbetz@wfaa.com
