Recreation in Rockford: Illinois town may be last Sportstown, but definitely not least

Parks & Recreation, Oct, 2004

In the movie A League of Their Own, the women's professional baseball team, the Rockford Peaches, win the World Series. Although the Peaches aren't a part of Rockford anymore, other minor league teams like the Ice Hogs, Rockford Lightning and Rockford Riverhawks are present-day winners in this town's eyes.

Called the "amateur sports capital" of the Midwest, Rockford has earned a national reputation for providing quality sports facilities and programming. The Rockford Park District has earned the National Gold Medal for Excellence twice (1989, 1995), and is responsible for pumping an estimated $14.8 million of visitor revenue into the economy. Karen Weis, senior manager of marketing and community relations for Rockford says, "It's the facilities that we offer and the number of tournaments. We can fill up hotels in a 30-minute radius--that has tremendous economic impact for gas stations, stores and local businesses all brought in through recreation."

The town boasts 30 different recreational facilities, including a BMX track, a target practice pistol range, an 18-hole disc golf course, dogparks, as well as the traditional sports complexes and community parks. Several new facilities, such as the BMX track, have been born from Rockford residents' own ideas. The track, now considered by professionals to be one of the top 10 BMX race tracks in the nation, came about because one couple volunteered to make it. "They had a deaf son who was interested in it, and said they'd run it if they could have a location to build it," Weis says. Now, every weekend the track hums with people from all across the country, while the local couple is still running the track. In addition to extreme athletes taking to the track, Rockford has found that many residents are enjoying more traditional recreation at the city's indoor sports center. After only one full year of operation, the center is brimming with activity, from wheelchair basketball, to soccer to tennis.

"We have a tremendous therapeutic recreation program thriving," says Weis, who also adds that more leagues are forming every day.

The parks and recreation department is also testing some niche markets to see how popular they'll be in the winter months, such as dodgeball and badmitton. Weis says that the hockey program for juniors, led by a passionate staff, is also thriving, with boys and girls lining up to join a team. In the next five years, the district plans to add six skate-parks, an Olympic ice rink and several sand volleyball courts, just to name a few. Rockford also offers more than 700 different recreational programs and special events throughout the year.

The most popular programming and facilities may be the town's 25 golf courses. More than 500,000 people play golf per year. The National Golf Foundation (NGF) was "astounded" in 1988 when it was asked to undertake a feasibility study for building a fifth public golf course for the Park District. Nowhere else in the United States did so many people play so much golf in such a traditionally "blue collar" town. NGF estimated there were close to 100,000 unused rounds in the community because people could not get on the golf courses to play due to capacity.

In addition, Rockford received first place rankings in Golf Digest's Places to Play in 1998, 1999 and 2000, and also earned top ratings in 1998 when Golf Digest ranked Rockford as the best mid-sized city for golf, and 12th overall among 309 qualifying cities surveyed in the United States based on quality of courses, holes per capita, and affordable golf fees.

The sport isn't just for adults either--in 2001, Rockford was chosen to host a Tiger Woods Junior Golf clinic. The popularity of the sport continues to grow with kids and teens in the region, with only 200 youth players 20 years ago, to now more than 4,000 today.

But the Rockford Park District couldn't provide nearly all of this if it wasn't for important partnerships it has formed over the past few years. One of those is with the neighboring school districts. In addition to sharing buildings, facilities, equipment and maintenance duties, the two entities also share users. The schools permit the Rockford Park District to use its distribution lists to families, who can then benefit from park programs offered. The park and recreation department also became involved in the Youth Recreation Council, which is made up of students from local schools who make decisions on recreation in parks and in the community.

Weis says, "We think that the Sportstown honor that was bestowed upon us, really affirmed to us what we already knew--that Rockford is a great place to live, work and play."