Additional recreation programs available to community in spring

Feb. 24, 2021 | Miasha Lee

EAST LONGMEADOW – The East Longmeadow Recreation Department announced a host of programs for the upcoming year on their online brochure. They will have around 30 different programs running this spring: babysitting courses, baseball, boys and girls lacrosse, adult fitness classes, soccer, softball and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) classes.

The East Longmeadow Recreation Department mission is to connect generations of residents by providing enriching programs and experiences that will inspire healthier living, increase social engagement and love for their community.

“As we look at our programming and what we do, we keep that in our mind,” said Recreation Director Donna Prather. “We are a rec  department that has activities for anyone six months to 99 plus. It’s not just sports, we have STEM programs, craft programs such as our Kids Virtual Disney Craft Series, day camps, home alone courses and many more. Currently, we still are running the ice rink and ski.”

She continued, “We follow the governor’s guidelines. We write the lesson plans according to what he allows us to do and then we involve our Health Director Aimee Petrosky, which has been a great help for us. She's helped us with the plans and we keep rewriting them every time the governor puts out a new guideline.”

Assistant Recreation Director Geordie Emmanuel explained, “We want to find ways to diversify the community. We have a wide variety of programs. A lot of fitness classes for 18 plus, family programming and a good number of special events.”

Emmanuel stated that the East Longmeadow Recreation Department have done brochures, but stopped a couple of years ago to see what the demand would be completely online. Due to a dip in enrollment, the department decided to bring it back two years ago starting with the summer 2019 brochure. Though they didn't put out a fall 2020 or winter 2020-2021 brochure, now they have their spring 2021 brochure which covers February through May.

The department switched to a new registration software called MyRec, and Emmanuel said they started adding all of their new programming into that software. They’re asking residents, nonresidents and anyone who would like to partake in any programming with them to create a household with their new MyRec software because they’re not going to be transferring anything from their RecDesk software.

“We’re going to be starting completely fresh so we’re asking people to create new households and after they create a household, they have to wait before they get approved because we have to approve all of the new accounts,” Emmanuel responded.

Prather added, “The wait could be 30 minutes to the next day because we’re trying to do a really quick turnover. On our first day 150 households had signed up immediately once we put this out, so the interest in it was really great. We’re in the transition between the two softwares. All of our traditional sports like baseball, lacrosse and soccer are still being registered through the RecDesk system. Parents can go to elrec.recdesk.com. If they have already registered for the spring they do not have to register again in MyRec.”

With the 2021 spring brochure, the department has new STEM programs called Code Your Own ROBLOX Game for ages 7-10, Game Development with Unity for ages 10 and older and Minecraft Coding for ages 8-12. There are also with new virtual fitness classes that include Pilates, barre, core strength, high interval training, full body refresh, tighten and tone and yoga.

Emmanuel said they’re trying to expand on their STEM programming and offering different programs they might think the community would want.

He said, “We're trying to hit every age group and any group of interests or specific niches that they might have and offer programming in that way to bring a little extra something especially during COVID, but it’s one of our goals for the department moving forward.”

The other big thing the Recreation Department is doing is looking to expand aquatics and looking to start inclusive programming with adaptive swim lessons and other inclusive programming, hopefully next fall. They’re also looking to redesign their pool memberships for this upcoming summer. Their brochure for the summer will be coming out by the end of the month or early March covering May through August. Registrations for the summer programs will start March 16 at 8 a.m. for residents.

The department also has a community garden on 64 Hampden Rd. on the Brown Farm Recreation area. Though Prather said it’s not new, they would like to grow that program. They have a volunteer that plants the garden and donates all the produce that he grows to the Senior Center in East Longmeadow

Prather and Emmanuel’s goals are to bring back a little bit more normalcy into peoples’ lives and to get people active.

“Everyone’s lives have changed so much because of COVID,” Prather echoed. “We just want to make sure that we'll still as a department and a town provide recreation for our residents.”

To register for any of the spring programs go to eastlongmeadowrec.com

For additional questions email recreation@eastlongmeadowma.gov or to call at 525-5437 ext. 2.

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