Rec

Freedom area recreation officials complain that a lack of coaches, game officials and other volunteers may result in higher registration fees or elimination of some youth programs.The following anecdotes illustrate their problems:* Freedom Optimist soccer and St. Joseph basketball organizers almost canceled parts of their programs recently due to lack of coaches. Coaches materialized only when the Optimists returned registration fees and planned a lottery to determine which eighth- and ninth-gradeboys would play.

The formerly city-owned Barclay Recreation Center will make its debut as a privately run community center May 18, serving the Charles Village area, including the Abell, Oakenshawe, Harwood and Old Goucher communities. A grand opening celebration, possibly with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake in attendance, is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the center, 2900 Barclay St., in the Charles Village area. The Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks last year turned over the underutilized, 7,300-square-foot facility to the city public school next door, Barclay Elementary/Middle, to operate as a social and education center in a public-private partnership with the nonprofit Greater Homewood Community Corp.

WE RARELY WENT to the public recreation center near the projects where I lived during my childhood. Ball games and other sports occurred in the yards and streets that surrounded our houses. The rec center had a little park with a slide, swings, merry-go-round and climbing bars. But we had similar playground stuff at school, so no one made a special trip to the rec center just for that.It was more fun to play on the dirt hills of a construction site where new apartments were being built. We liked to play army and throw dirt-clod grenades that broke into fragments when they hit somebody.

The activities room on the far side of Lutherville Laboratory Elementary School on York Road is full of jazz dancers dressed in black leggings and tank tops on a recent Wednesday afternoon. The room smells of team spirit, the beat of the music races through the floor up to my chest. The dancers are under the instruction of Brittany Brothers, graduate of Towson University, and her assistant, Morgan Colburn , a senior at Maryvale High School. Brothers and Coleburn are just two of about 15 dance staff with the Lutherville Timonium Recreation Council Tap/Jazz program.

Our Catonsville Youth League recreation programs, run 100 percent by volunteers, have to plead with the Catonsville Times every year to get two sentences listing registrations. Yet I see there is space to run a full page story on I9 sports, a for-profit program. I think it is ridiculous! Charlie Strouse Catonsville

YOUTH FOOTBALL in the county is turning, it seems, into a Department of Recreation and Parks thing. The agency has agreed to take over administration of the Howard County Trojans, one of three remaining independent youth football programs, this fall. That means the rec department, besides having youth age-group teams participating in a league with a distinct, if not exclusive, county flavor, now will operate three of the six county-based programs. Last fall, the department played a leadership role in establishing a 300-player football program in the western part of the county, as well as a new youth league.

Gwendolyn Jones recalls how it was two years ago when she wanted to go to the recreation center near her home in the Flag House Courts housing development.The 17-year-old remembers children outside the East Baltimore recreation center refused admittance by adults playing basketball.Shortly before the city-run facility closed, she hauntingly recalls, adults gathered in corners of the center to sell and use drugs.Since then, several of the rec centers in poor neighborhoods have been reopened by a private service organization that continually must raise the funds to operate them.

A 26-year-old man awaiting trial on a rape charge was fatally stabbed Thursday morning in the Baltimore City Detention Center, according to a statement from state prison officials. Officials said Nathaniel George was stabbed about 10:45 a.m. in the recreation yard at the East Eager Street complex. Authorities have identified a suspect but charges have not been filed.

More and more people are asking why the county Recreation and Parks Department doesn't get more involved in promoting youth sports on a larger scale.The bottom line is that the Rec and Parks Department under Director Joe McCann does not promote anything bigger than the community-level programs. That doesn't please everyone, especially those in baseball and softball who are involved in national organizations.It just might be time for a change in leadership.The people who work under McCann and run the various athletic programs do just the bare minimum with coaches associations doing most of the work.

The children spoke first, an appropriate gesture considering they have the most to lose. Dominique Ritch, 14, strode to the microphone at midcourt in the gym of the Rosemont Police Athletic League Center and faced the director of Baltimore's Department of Recreation and Parks. His first words would be repeated in some form or another throughout the evening by children, teens and adults. "I want to know why you all are closing our rec center," the Calverton Middle School seventh-grader asked.

The Roosevelt Park Recreation Center reopened Wednesday after being closed for about a month because of a broke water pipe. "I missed it," said Gabrielle Barnes, 10, a third grader from Hampden Elementary/Middle School. She was one of 14 children who returned to the center for after-school enrichment activities. Usually, that number is about 25, but some families might not have gotten the message yet that the center was reopen, director Joshua Fissel said. The pipe was repaired at a cost of $10,000, said Kia McLeod, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks.

Baltimore City Councilman Nick Mosby said he is trying to set up a community meeting, possibly next week, to discuss the closing of the Roosevelt Park Recreation Center for up to a month to repair a broken water line. The city Department of Recreation and Parks closed the Roosevelt Park center at Falls Road and West 36th Street on March 28 after the kitchen drainage pipe broke, said spokeswoman Kia McLeod. A sign on the front door says, "Center closed until further notice due to mechanical repair emergencies.

Inside the former Barclay Recreation Center on Saturday, the smell of fumes filled the air as a band of volunteers spent the morning putting on a fresh coat of paint in anticipation of its reopening under new management later this year. The city's Department of Recreation and Parks shut down the center last August after 32 years and handed it over to the neighboring Barclay Elementary and Middle School. Volunteers from the area finally started working earlier this year to get the facility back up and running.

A dozen neighborhood volunteers will spend their Presidents Day turning around a former city recreation center that new sponsors envision reborn as an education and community center. After 32 years, the Barclay Recreation Center shut down in August, a victim of budget cuts in the city's Department of Recreation and Parks. Neighborhood advocates believe the 7,500-square-foot facility, constructed immediately adjacent to the Barclay Elementary/Middle School in the 300 block of E. 29th Street, can find a new life on its own. They picture a location where both students and residents can have a town hall meeting, a safe after-school spot or a place to hold a birthday party or take a yoga class.

The deadline for submitting sports copy is 9 a.m. on Monday. We prefer email (howardcountysports@patuxent.com). We do not accept results by phone. When two Howard County teams play, players from both teams (first and last names) must be mentioned in the write-up. Questions? Call 410-332-6606. Running Over 350 runners participated in the 18th annual Penguin Pace 5K , which took place in Columbia Sunday, Feb. 3. Despite running a 10-mile race the day before, Karsten Brown won the Penguin Pace in 17:28.

The deadline for submitting sports copy is 9 a.m. on Monday. We prefer email (howardcountysports@patuxent.com). We do not accept results by phone. When two Howard County teams play, players from both teams (first and last names) must be mentioned in the write-up. Questions? Call 410-332-6606. Running There were 86 runners that came out Jan. 20 for the Howard County Striders winter weekly series race at Thunder Hill Elementary. Stephen Olenick and Joelle Chall were the top finishers in the 2-mile race, while Karsten Brown and Anna Holt-Gosselin won the 6-mile race.

Youth coaches were asking a $1 million question Friday about the Board of Education's proposal to save money by eliminating custodians' overtime, which would end recreation sports on weekends.Youth basketball coach Robin Schmidt called me to say he had heard that Rec and Parks takes $1 million from its budget each year and turns it over to the school system to cover the costs of community use of the schools.That, of course, includes youth and recreation sports.Ron Beckett, assistant to the superintendent in charge of school services, confirmed that "it is true they do give us a million for community use."

The large open archway that runs from one end of Fells Point's Recreation Pier to the other symbolizes its role as a portal between the historic community and the harbor beyond, making the ultimate civic gesture for a waterfront setting. But as part of a $45 million plan to convert the 1914 city landmark to an upscale Aloft hotel, developers are proposing that the opening be glassed-in so the area beneath the arch - which has always been an outdoor space - can become part of the hotel's interior.

Tonight a former South Baltimore rec center is re-born as a tech center. Work - paid work for clients whose fees will help send students to college - will happen there. But there will still be plenty of play. Focused on after-school programming and workforce training for city public school students, The Digital Harbor Tech Center, was built, and its programming designed, for "exploration and discovery," organizers say. It's why the tables are on wheels and, even after months of planning, the precise activities done on them, tech director Rose Burt said, are "going to depend on what the kids are interested in. " The public - and, with finishing touches, including the sign , completed only yesterday, many participants - will get their first look at the retrofitted South Baltimore Recreation Center at 6 this evening.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has hired a new director of recreation and parks, choosing an experienced manager who has headed similar agencies in three cities. Ernest W. Burkeen Jr., 64, who previously ran recreation and parks departments in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Detroit, will begin in Baltimore Dec. 17, the mayor is scheduled to announce Tuesday. "Ernest Burkeen is a nationally respected leader in his field with a great track record of success improving parks and recreational opportunities for urban communities," Rawlings-Blake said in a statement.