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Dear Neighbors:
We want to congratulate the Town Council in taking the important step of authorizing town officials to negotiate for possible purchase of the 58-acre parcel being vacated by UCONN. We understand this is not a commitment to acquire the property. Nevertheless, we believe this step preserves the possibility that the property will be used to benefit the citizens and families of our community.
You may not be familiar with our relatively new organization so let us begin by introducing ourselves. The War-Chief Sports Council began as an unknown athletic booster club looking to support two high schools with a historic rivalry. One of our primary missions is to raise money for athletic initiatives that are beyond the Board of Education’s generous, but finite capital budget. This is not our only mission. We also sponsor and produce the television and digital Internet broadcast of selected Hall/Conard contests. Additionally, we sponsor other athletic related events such as last year’s Career Night that featured several prominent industry experts to include ESPN celebrities and our very own Betty Remigino-Knapp. Last year’s annual report is attached and amplifies our mission.
Our high school athletes are of course products of our wonderful and plentiful youth organizations. We are increasingly working together to help foster increased synergy between the high school programs and their youth counterparts, which in turn offers the wonderful advantage of casting our high school kids in leadership roles.
Over the last year we have been at meetings and heard the message coming from our town leaders that there is a “new normal” when it comes to upgrading our athletic facilities in town. By that, we are led to believe that the town will increasingly look to the youth sports organizations – and perhaps the War-Chief Sports Council – to help pay for upkeep, maintenance, and repairs of our public athletic space used by our children. We suppose this is rooted in the perception that the youth organizations are flush with cash that can be tapped in tough fiscal times. There are differences of opinions on how this message is received, but we are all unified in our commitment to help make this the best town in New England.
The strengths of our town are known to all who live here. When it comes to ethnic and socio-economic diversity – we have no peers anywhere in New England if not the entire country. Our schools are truly exceptional and when you factor in our unique diversity – they also have no peers. Our music and arts program is extraordinary and on par with the most affluent private schools in the nation. The economic vitality of downtown West Hartford stands out in a part of the country struggling to find an identity. One thing we call have in common is that we choose to live in West Hartford and most of us do so because we love it!
That said, one area where we are behind our competition is the quantity, quality, and availability of field and gym space for our children. Our town has been fully built-out for forty or more years. The wonderful and remarkable rise of women’s athletics in the last century has dramatically increased the number of children competing and learning life’s lessons in the laboratory of athletic competition. Our town employees are heroes and do a fantastic job with the resources we have; however, they cannot increase the amount of space available, nor can they address major capital projects needed to remedy several deficient areas. Our basketball teams are forced to have 12-kids on a team, which dramatically reduces fun and development. Sterling field is subpar and hard to keep up with the holes thereby posing a danger. Our boys and girls youth lacrosse programs compete on fields (KP and Duffy) that are unacceptable by modern standards. At the high school level our weight rooms (not just for football anymore) pale in comparison to the competition. We are justified in celebrating the public/private partnership that brought us lights to our high school stadiums, but make no mistake – we were 20+ years behind our competition and among the last 10% of schools in our conference to add lights. The parents of our boys/girls soccer, lacrosse, and baseball players too frequently must travel to neighboring towns to use their indoor facilities in the off-season (e.g. FSA in Farmington; Windsor Bubble).
The War-Chief Sports Council can help; we want to help; we plan to help; however, we need the commitment of our town leaders as partners. We recognize the financial and political considerations that our leaders face on behalf of the citizens they serve. We cannot commit financial resources associated with acquiring the 58-acre property, but we can use our network for families and contacts to help offset any criticism associated with devoting all or a portion of the future development to address the needs of our kids. Further, there are likely public/private partnerships that may be forged after the property is acquired. For example, after acquiring the parcel the town could open it up for bids for private investors to construct an indoor FSA-type facility (devoted to indoor baseball, lacrosse, baseball, softball, basketball). We also believe an additional turf practice field at each high school (big benefit to youth programs) is a necessary step to improve what our town offers to its families. We don’t need Fairfield County stadiums and scoreboards, but we do want the ability to compete without disadvantage. This is the last chance the Town will ever have to remedy this profound disadvantage we face.
We believe that our ideas would blend nicely with the Children’s Museum proposal as there is ample space and the traffic times would not coincide.
We look forward to our continued partnership with the youth programs, the high school coaches and athletic department and our elected leaders. Please let us know if and when we can come address you in person to further explore these topics. Thank you for your leadership and selfless devotion to our community.
Respectfully submitted,
Paul McConnell – Hall
Dennis Swanton – Conard
On behalf of the War-Chief Sports Council
Silly Rabbits, FSA style facilities are for Soccer. War Chiefs? Ugly 80s name; its 2016!
Personally, I find there are plenty of venues for kids to get to explore and pursue sporting endeavors, but not enough for those wishing to explore artistic endeavors. In general, sports organizations are much more well-funded than arts organizations. It would be nice to see the complex used as a multi-purpose space to provide local non-profit arts organizations to rent space for arts endeavors at a reasonable cost. The building could host anything from musical rehearsals for local ensembles, arts classes, music therapy classes, the possibilities are really very endless.
There is room for both!! And more. Big misconception about athletic budgets and youth sports. They are year-to-year budgets that cover operating costs for the children that participate (who also engage in music, arts, dance, and other sports). No team or league is flush with cash. Simply not the case. Anyway, the point is that we can agree that the space can and should be devoted to the citizens of West Hartford and not go to more housing (of any type) or more commercial retail space.
Love it. I go over to FSA often for baseball…each time I am there I feel like 1/2 of my kid’s school is there. When we see them…the talk track is ALWAYS “West Hartford needs something like this”. Would be a great addition to the community.
As a parent who had kids very heavily involved with the arts at the schools and sports at the schools I can honestly say that the Arts are better funded than Sports. Now many would say that is the way it should be; and I would not argue that. However, we cannot forget that sports generally speaking serves a more diverse groups of kids. But I agree with Paul with a little creativity this property can serve both the Arts and Sports. I am for keeping our options open!