Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship for The Other Paper
SOUTH BURLINGTON – Adam Matth, director of Recreation and Parks in South Burlington, is paving the way for a lively, community driven Recreation Department. With over eight seasons in sports and event planning with the Vermont Lake Monsters baseball team, Adam started in his current job two years ago. With the help of department team members and volunteers, Adam works to pull in all ages and make the Rec Department dynamic and relevant to the people of South Burlington.
Q: So you shifted to the South Burlington Recreation and Parks Department from the Lake Monsters. Why?
A: The Lake Monsters are very event driven. Baseball is what’s on the field, but people are coming for everything else. This current position allows me and the department to be creative, coming up with new ideas to engage people in different ways, and looking at recreation. A bit outside of the box compared to what people typically think of youth sports.
Q: What does your typical event plan look like?
A: Our summers are our busiest time frame, so May through September is when we do probably about 65 to 70% of our events just because we don’t have an indoor rec center. Those usually run until 7:30 to 8 o’clock, and all of our events have to set up and break down day-of, so that adds in quite a bit of time.
Q: What do you do to get good turnout?
A: Getting people from surrounding towns, which we’ve been successful with as well as marketing programs as non-recreation. For example, our traveling beer garden that we have in September, it’s every Thursday. We have a totally different logo for it and a brand that goes with it. Young adults aren’t typically looking at the Rec Department as their place for social engagement.
Q: How do you get inspiration for your events?
A: Someone in our office wanted to do a women’s empowerment speaker panel, so that’s what she was driven by. We had it in July, and now that’s led to a monthly speaker series that we have. So it’s saying, “hey, what are you passionate about, and how can I lead that into events that we can do for the community?”
Q: Are there any programs that you’ve implemented that have been particularly successful?
A: Something that we rolled out and have seen success with, not just from South Burlington, but greater Burlington too, is our adaptive programming. Whenever we do a youth sport, basketball, soccer, lacrosse, baseball, et cetera, we’ll offer an adaptive version, which is something that has slowly been growing over the last year.
Q: Is there a specific age range that you target based on the demographic of the community?
A: South Burlington is getting younger in age. We do more family events than we did previously, but we’ve really made a larger focus on stuff that’s engaging people aged 20 to 45 both on the program side of things, when it comes to sports or educational programs, and then also events. So regardless of what your family situation is, if you don’t have kids, if you’re single, if you’re married, there’s something for you.
Q: Living in Vermont, winter is a really big factor in recreation. How do you guys navigate that?
A: We’re actually in the middle of our parks and open space master plan, which is looking at all of our parks in South Burlington and recreation as a whole to make a guiding blueprint for the next 10 years. How are they going to best be utilized with the population of South Burlington in the future? And part of that also is a rec center. I think as we continue expanding our programming and events, it helps make the case that we need one.
Q: Is there any project you are particularly passionate about, or something that you’d love to see?
A: I’d like to do a brew fest, which we’re kicking the can at for the spring. And then I’d like to bring back the Farmers Market in some form.
Q: If somebody visited South Burlington in 10 years, what would you want them to see in the city?
A: I would want them to see a variety of different parks in the community that fit for everyone, regardless of where they live- accessible parks that are open to everyone to use them.