As baseball season approaches, the City of Savannah’s Parks & Recreation Department has its hands full. For many years, complaints about Savannah’s youth baseball facilities in comparison to surrounding areas (such as Effingham and Bulloch Counties) have been mostly ineffective. Over the last few weeks, I’ve spoken to lots of people involved in the rec baseball league and the recreation department in general. I’ve attended a coaches meeting which was anything but mundane, and I’ve asked questions of coaches, parents and city leaders.
My conversations have left me pessimistic. And even though that’s not abnormal for me (or anyone in my role), I have to admit, this story has more questions than it does answers. Forget about any efforts aimed at mending a long-fractured relationship between Savannah Recreation Department leaders and employees. That’s a pipe dream for the time being. The questions have been asked, but the answers seem radically different based on who is doing the answering.
There is no easy way to explain the situation. Certainly not in a brief way, at least. There are people. There are problems. Savannah’s Recreation Department, and several city council members, have been scrambling in recent weeks to figure out how to best address concerns from citizens (youth baseball coaches and parents of youth baseball players, for the most part).
So, what are those concerns? What’s this all about?
Field Availability – Savannah has eight baseball/softball facilities (Minick, Paulson, Scarborough, Hudson Hill, Hull Park, Soldiers Field and Bo Levett). Three of them are used for games typically (Minick, Scarborough, Paulson) while the other single-use locations are used for practices. Only two of the complexes have lights (five fields at Paulson & four at Minick). For months, the gates at Minick have been locked, as the city has cited safety reasons concerning the conditions of the rotting, wooden light poles.
Field Conditions – Beyond the light poles at Minick, coaches have long complained about the actual playing surfaces at these baseball fields. The infield clay is often in poor condition, with grass sprouting up in spots. The outfield grass is often overgrown to the point where the baseballs or softballs come to a complete stop quickly after reaching it.
Inconsistent Policies – At Paulson, where the city’s recreation policies are truly determined, the powers that be seem to have inconsistent policies when it comes to who can use the fields and when. Things like a September 17, 2022 dog show and many youth football games last fall, were taking place at Minick and Paulson. Meanwhile, baseball coaches are often told the space is unavailable due to liability issues.
Archaic Practices – A prime example of the aged ways of the city’s rec department is the manner in which a team registers for league play, and the way in which they schedule practices. A team must register through written forms, and submit them through delivery to the Paulson Complex. In order to schedule a practice, which can only be done as far out as seven days in advance, a coach must email or call Vickie Webber (scheduling coordinator) to reserve space. Webber’s hours at Paulson are usually Monday-Friday from roughly 8 a.m. to noon. If you miss her, you may just be out of luck.
Methodical Approach – Nothing, and I mean nothing, happens quickly here. Coaches and teams have long heard about the improvements coming in the future, but they never seem to come.
Lack of Communication – Emails between city recreation leaders and coaches around the time of August-September 2022 indicate the communication is lacking. After a meeting between coaches and leaders on August 24, 2022, an email was sent from one coach to the Recreation & Leisure Services Director at the time, Kelly Ledbetter. The email was thanking the city for their time at the meeting, and it also outlined the key action items I’m detailing here. Still, a reply to that email did not come until September 8, 2022.
Lack of Responsibility – Who is in charge? It seems that for every problem the city has had to respond to, they provide more reasons than solutions. There is an answer for everything, and a response to nothing.
Now, who are the primary people – the main characters involved? That’s a list that is not so easy to compile. But we’ve gotta’ start somewhere, with someone.
Savannah’s Interim Director of Recreation & Leisure Services, Nick Roberts, spoke with me over the phone for nearly half an hour on Monday, February 6. He previously served as the assistant Director in Savannah until accepting a Director’s position in Norwalk, CT and eventually returned back to Savannah to work for the city outside of the parks department. As of January 28, he has been dealing with a sticky situation, one which he wasn’t a part of creating.
“The baseball fields, like a lot of our facilities, they need a little bit of work,” he said during the phone call. “The good news is, I think we’re moving in the right direction to try and address some of the maintenance issues we’ve had in the past.”
After I attended a February 2 “Coaches Certification Meeting” where Roberts, 44, introduced himself formally to the roughly 50 youth baseball coaches in the room, a few things jumped out at me. But most noticeable was the fact that Roberts – a freshly named interim who was in the position for less than a week at that point – was the one standing up front, fielding questions from a clearly frustrated group of citizens from the meeting’s very start. Sitting near the front, nodding and sometimes chiming in, were some of the Rec Department’s most experienced employees.
There was Earl Etheridge (Athletics Administrator), Webber and longtime rec employees Buddy Hardy and Kevin Smith. Together, that group had a lot of the answers that Roberts didn’t have. Yet still, it was the new guy taking all the fire.
“I am the interim director, not the full-time director,” said Roberts at the meeting.
He went on to express the issue that Savannah doesn’t actually own the property at Minick. So, said Roberts, “before we make any significant investments to the property, we want to make sure we have a long-term lease there.”
Roberts told me that the light poles at Minick would be coming down within three weeks (of February 6). Only then will the fields be unlocked and made available to the citizens of the city. Even then, the fields will not have new lights until long after the season has ended. That means the city is down to five baseball fields with lights (all at Paulson) for its youth baseball season beginning on April 10.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday of this week, brand-new lights were being installed at the turf football field located adjacent to the light-less baseball fields at Scarborough. Go figure.
District 6 Alderman Kurtis Purtee addressed the issue through a Facebook post on February 5. Again, it was more summary than solution.
“Because of the potential reduction of available playing time at Minick, the City is extending the practice period for teams to start practices two weeks earlier this year,” he wrote. “The City’s Athletic Services Division, which manages the city’s sports leagues, will also be pushing back the start of the baseball season this year to April 10, a month after we typically start, to take advantage of daylight savings time. This will allow teams to utilize Minick for practices and games during extended daylight hours.”
But coaches like Chris Jones and Andrew Barrett say they’ve heard this all before.
“After last season, we were told the fields were locked up indefinitely,” said Jones in a sit-down conversation with me and Barrett on February 10. “From there, it was all about getting the fields back up to par and getting the gates unlocked. So, (Ledbetter) actually did that. We had the fields opened and being used again within a few weeks. Just so dads could go out there with their kids and play ball if they wanted to.”
“Now, we’re back to where we started, it seems like.”
For Roberts, he is asking for something that many are tired of giving.
“I think we just need time,” he said during our phone call. “We just need some more time. We’ve got a plan in place and we understand the concerns. We understand that we’ve got some improvements to make and I think we just need some more time.”
I relayed that sentiment to Jones and Barrett, and asked them if that request from Roberts was reasonable.
“Well, we’re willing to give it to him because I understand he just walked into this position and he can’t just snap his fingers and make it happen,” said Barrett. “But it’s like, man, this is the same exact thing we’ve heard from everyone. We’ve talked to coaches who have coached in Savannah for a decade or longer. And they just tell us ‘good luck with that.’”
“We hear it all the time,” Jones said of the time request. “It just seems like we’re bothering them to be honest.”
In 1977, the City of Savannah established a 12-person Recreation Commission which was tasked with “Reviewing, from time to time, the recreation programs and facilities, and recommend to the Mayor, Aldermen and the City Manager such additions and changes as may seem appropriate or necessary to provide a comprehensive recreation program to fit the needs of the community.”
The Recreation Commission holds regularly scheduled bi-monthly meetings, and Javares Taylor is one of the members currently on the commission. He spoke with me over the phone on February 2.
“We meet and we discuss problems and issues in the community, but to me, it’s just blowing smoke. It’s not being taken seriously,” he said of the commission’s role in impacting policy change. “We request fields and can’t get any answers. They don’t even know the schedules most of the time. They need to bring in somebody who is new and fresh. Things are locked up. Nothing is moving fast enough.”
A project launched in May 2021 called “Recreation RE-iMAGINED” was, as the city’s press release at the time so eloquently put it, “A City of Savannah initiative to improve, standardize and reimagine the city’s recreation and leisure facilities, programs, and services.”
It was essentially a community questionnaire asking citizens for input on how to improve the city’s recreation.
“We are in the business of providing the highest level of service to our citizens,” said Ledbetter in May of 2021 to WSAV-TV. “We just want to ensure that we are putting our best foot forward.”
As of this week, the results of the project were unknown to me, despite my searching everywhere for them. When I tried to take the questionnaire on the city’s website, I was told the input time had come and gone.
Nearly two years after it launched and we still don’t have a results report? What did we suggest, as citizens? I’m curious. But the slow turnaround time is no surprise for a project proudly dubbed as a “10-year plan.”
Ten years for better youth baseball fields in Savannah? That sounds about right. But Roberts is new on the job. And perhaps he is the man to “freshen” things up inside an increasingly stale department.
“I know that there has been a lot of uncertainty here in recent years,” he told me. “And there hasn’t been probably enough communication about what the plan is moving forward. We’ve just undergone a leadership change and so that’s why I wanted to be at the (coaches certification) meeting to introduce myself, give my contact information and so on. That way, at least (the coaches) have someone to go to address some of their issues.
“That’s our goal. We want to hear their concerns, address them, put a plan in place, and move forward from there.”
Follow Travis Jaudon on Twitter/Instagram @JaudonSports. Email him at travisLjaudon@gmail.com.
Related Stories
Savannah City Council approves new lights for ballfields at Minick Sports Complex
This article appears in Connect Savannah | February, 2023.
