Piss poor conditions at Oconee Veterans Park gymnasium
OK, so it was the day after Halloween and with the time change, I am always willing to cut a little slack to the fine folks at the Oconee Parks and Recreation Department. As the fourth grade basketball season starts in earnest tomorrow evening, I took my son up to a familiar haunt for me, and that is the Open Gym session where basically anyone can shoot hoops. Now admittedly not that many people are going to work on their three-point shot at noon on a Sunday, but I was raring to go and wanted to give my son a taste of what big boy basketball is going to be all about. So when we got there the gym was locked tight as a drum and no signs to contradict the previously posted 8 am to 6 pm posting. Maybe there was something online, but I was too damn stubborn to look (not to mention tired too).
So we drove around the remnants of Autry Road as there was a very major girls softball tournament going on and that obviously had the attention of the parks and rec staff. We drove all the way to the back end where that road used to connect with Hodges Mill Road, and some guy was inside and locking a gate still a ways away from the creek crossing and where you could even see the end, so we turned back.
By now the gym was open, but no one seemed too anxious to open or even attempt to get the basketball court ready. A father and son worked out on the elevated track, and several meetings were going on downstairs. We walked in the main gym area and neither of the big main hoops were down, which were not that big a deal. OK, now there were no basketballs out or available and no one at the desk to ask for one and there were a couple of bags quite visible behind the counter. So I told my son to wait on the other side of the desk and I walked back and grabbed both bags and was only able to figure out how to untether one of the sacks. By now a family of four had joined us in the still somewhat dark gym. I found one light switch the big overhead mercury halide (?) lights were yet to be ignited or warmed up. OK, I eventually asked and got someone to do that and turn them on to warm up and light the complex.
Not a single net was completely connected to the four remaining basketball hoops in the gym. Some were torn, some were off by one or two strands to the rims, but none were ready for any serious action. All right, I have shot hoops on more than one net-less or net-frayed rims, so no big deal there either. But I kept noticing crud on the courts, maybe grass, or mud, or clay, or some combination thereof. OK, it just needs a dry mop and it should be good to go. Lord knows I skipped a few sweepings in my four year run at Herman C. Michael park and the John T. Brannen building from 1989 to 1994.
Then I noticed moldings where the bricks meet the floor had been torn away in not just one place but most of the back wall. OK, maybe some doofus on the construction company did not let the glue harden long enough or something, but the whole back wall? No way. Then I looked down in the middle of the far small court and it appears that someone or something had been maybe making posters or something just short of grinding fashionable heels into the pristine nature of the recently completed court.
All these working together suggests we need to get the OCPRD's John Gentry back from Afghanistan to make sure things are getting done at the new complex because to this trained eye they were not. I hope they let him see his family during the Christmas season so he can see for himself how fast this new park has been allowed to deteriorate, decay and rot in a relatively short time. Let's all try to take better care of our public facilities to make them last longer for all us. I will get off my soap box now but will never give up being a gadfly for great basketball surfaces in this wonderful county of ours. Oconee County rocks, and let's keep it going instead of planting new PVC farms, as my friend Steve told me the name for the ghost towns springing up and shutting down all over Oconee County.
See you on the courts, my friends. I will give the Oconee County Parks and Recreation Department props for joining the social networking world, but you should make sure to place a link to the actual site and not jam it all together like OconeeCounty ParksandRecreation and have an Athens, GA network under it in the wonderful world of Facebook.
So we drove around the remnants of Autry Road as there was a very major girls softball tournament going on and that obviously had the attention of the parks and rec staff. We drove all the way to the back end where that road used to connect with Hodges Mill Road, and some guy was inside and locking a gate still a ways away from the creek crossing and where you could even see the end, so we turned back.
By now the gym was open, but no one seemed too anxious to open or even attempt to get the basketball court ready. A father and son worked out on the elevated track, and several meetings were going on downstairs. We walked in the main gym area and neither of the big main hoops were down, which were not that big a deal. OK, now there were no basketballs out or available and no one at the desk to ask for one and there were a couple of bags quite visible behind the counter. So I told my son to wait on the other side of the desk and I walked back and grabbed both bags and was only able to figure out how to untether one of the sacks. By now a family of four had joined us in the still somewhat dark gym. I found one light switch the big overhead mercury halide (?) lights were yet to be ignited or warmed up. OK, I eventually asked and got someone to do that and turn them on to warm up and light the complex.
Not a single net was completely connected to the four remaining basketball hoops in the gym. Some were torn, some were off by one or two strands to the rims, but none were ready for any serious action. All right, I have shot hoops on more than one net-less or net-frayed rims, so no big deal there either. But I kept noticing crud on the courts, maybe grass, or mud, or clay, or some combination thereof. OK, it just needs a dry mop and it should be good to go. Lord knows I skipped a few sweepings in my four year run at Herman C. Michael park and the John T. Brannen building from 1989 to 1994.
Then I noticed moldings where the bricks meet the floor had been torn away in not just one place but most of the back wall. OK, maybe some doofus on the construction company did not let the glue harden long enough or something, but the whole back wall? No way. Then I looked down in the middle of the far small court and it appears that someone or something had been maybe making posters or something just short of grinding fashionable heels into the pristine nature of the recently completed court.
All these working together suggests we need to get the OCPRD's John Gentry back from Afghanistan to make sure things are getting done at the new complex because to this trained eye they were not. I hope they let him see his family during the Christmas season so he can see for himself how fast this new park has been allowed to deteriorate, decay and rot in a relatively short time. Let's all try to take better care of our public facilities to make them last longer for all us. I will get off my soap box now but will never give up being a gadfly for great basketball surfaces in this wonderful county of ours. Oconee County rocks, and let's keep it going instead of planting new PVC farms, as my friend Steve told me the name for the ghost towns springing up and shutting down all over Oconee County.
See you on the courts, my friends. I will give the Oconee County Parks and Recreation Department props for joining the social networking world, but you should make sure to place a link to the actual site and not jam it all together like OconeeCounty ParksandRecreation and have an Athens, GA network under it in the wonderful world of Facebook.
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