Courtesy photo
Children participate in the Rockingham Parks and Recreation swimming camp last year. This year’s swimming camp has been canceled because of concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions stemming from it.
ROCKINGHAM — The city’s Parks and Recreation Department announced in a Monday Facebook post that all of its summer offerings have been canceled because of restrictions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
City Manager Monty Crump and Rockingham Parks and Recreation Department Director Dave Davis for several weeks had been discussing the possibility of cancelling summer programs. Davis said last month that, “Nothing that we do lends itself to social distancing.”
“We normally have got our programs — particularly our baseball and softball programs — up and running by now,” Crump said. “And then there’s the pool, and the cost of running a pool, and we worry about social distancing there in the pool. And there’s the day camp with 100-plus kids a day, maintaining social distancing.
“Unfortunately this summer, it doesn’t look like it’s going to work out,” Crump added. “We’re probably not in a position to comply with the social distancing requirements.”
The list of programs canceled includes organized sports like baseball and softball, as well as the nine-week day camp and six-week swimming camp. Rockingham’s public swimming pool also will be closed for the summer.
Officials are open to the idea of starting the baseball and softball programs late in the summer if circumstances improve and state officials continue to loosen coronavirus-related restrictions.
The City of Rockingham took over the operations of its Parks and Recreation department from Richmond County in 1984.
“This is 40-plus years that we’ve offered these programs in the summer,” Davis said in an interview last month, “and it’ll probably be the first one that, invariably, we may not be able to offer them.”
All organized events are canceled, but the parks and other outdoor recreational areas overseen by the Parks and Recreation Department — such as Hitchcock Creek and Hinson Lake — will remain open to all visitors. Rotary Lodge, a reservable facility at Hinson Lake, has been temporarily closed because of the coronavirus. There are no reservable facilities at Hitchcock Creek, so operations there haven’t changed.
Crump said there will still be enough work for the department’s small staff to do.
“We’ve still got maintenance responsibilities,” Crump said. “As long as we can keep them busy — and there’s a lot of catch-up work to do around the buildings and facilities. There’s not but three or four full-time employees there, all the rest are part time. So that’s something we’ll evaluate, what to do with the staff.”
