Orange Rec Department to host many summer programs

ORANGE, NJ — New Orange Recreation Department Director Greg Tynes was among the Orange Township department heads who made a presentation to the South Ward residents who came out to Councilwoman Jamie Summers-Johnson’s community meeting at Heywood Avenue School on Wednesday, April 26.

Tynes discussed plans to keep city kids active, interested, off the streets and out of trouble in the coming summer months and invited parents to enroll their children in one of his department’s many programs and activities as soon as possible.

“We have a few new things that we’re trying to put in place for this summer,” said Tynes on Wednesday, April 26. “One of the things I’m proud of (is) that we have partnered with the high school coaches to do one-week clinics for seven sports and activities. There’s seven of them and they’re for kids, fourth grade to eighth grade. I was a high school coach for over 30 years and I know the importance of having a feeder system.”

Added benefits of the new clinics, Tynes said, are the interpersonal, intergenerational connections they help foster and build between students, children, parents, seniors and the entire community.

“We want the coaches to get to know the young people, get to know their future,” Tynes said. “We also want the parents to get to know the high school coaches. You’re going to lose kids to parochial schools and different things, but at least you can start something with the younger kids.”

Tynes is also interested in exposing Orange youths to nontraditional sports such as lacrosse, in addition to building and expanding on the city’s existing soccer programs, because “there’s more to life than basketball.”

“I just had a meeting Monday with some lacrosse coaches; we’re trying to bring lacrosse to the city,” Tynes said. “I grew up here. I’m a basketball guy, but there’s more to sports than just basketball. Orange is a basketball, football community, but we have to bring other things to the city and that’s what I want to do.”

Tynes then opened up the meeting to take questions from the public and business administrator Chris Hartwyck asked the rec director to talk a little bit about the summer camp programs

“We have two camps — one camp has already been in existence; it’s an academic camp, where they go to academic classes for half the day, then they have recreation in the afternoon,” Tynes said. “I deal with the recreation side of that. Dr. Austin, he deals with the academic part. The sports camp is going to be housed mostly at Rosa Parks School. Certain things will be at Lincoln Avenue School — our volleyball will be at Lincoln, boys basketball will be at Lincoln. Everything else, cheerleading, track — we also have softball — that will be at Central Playground and those camps will be run in the morning from 8:30 to 12:30 a.m. Participants get breakfast, they get lunch and they’re actually with their high school coach from 9 to 12.”

According to Tynes, there is a practical reason the summer recreation camps will only run for three hours during the day.

“The reason we only ran it for three hours is: I run basketball camps and my camp is usually eight hours, but it’s hard to have a coach run a camp for eight hours, unless you’re used to it,” Tynes said. “So, hopefully, they’ll build up to doing an all-day camp but, right now, that’s asking a lot, because when I run my basketball camp, we’re in the gym from 8:30 to 4:30. We eat lunch in the gym. We do everything in the gym.

“So to ask someone to do that the first time out is tough. So it’s a half-day camp. I call it the ‘clinic camp.’ But they’ll learn the basic fundamentals. It’s just good for the high school coaches to get to know their future, because I want them all to build a program. That’s something we should be doing in Orange, because it’s one high school, so you want to funnel everybody to the one school.”

Tynes gave up a portion of his presentation time to allow Hartwyck to answer a question from a resident at the meeting who asked if there were any programs for city youth going on at the old YWCA location.

Hartwyck stood up and informed everyone in attendance why the “new” recreation center is closed right now.

“The Y is closed for renovations; we shut it down so that we could stage the construction, because there’s some preparation work that we have to do before the construction,” Hartwyck said at the meeting. “Bids are currently out for the roof, the HVAC system and bids are being prepared and finalized for the renovation of the pool, the locker rooms, the bathrooms, handicap accessibility, new fire systems and additional code upgrades. We need to upgrade the electrical panel, we need to upgrade some of the plumbing code to bring the building up to current code.”

Regarding the timeline for finishing all the required work on the building, Hartwyck said he was hopeful the building would be available for summer 2018.

After that, a man asked Tynes about the city’s soccer program.

“We have soccer, but we just had talks and, hopefully, we’re going to have three different soccer programs in the city,” Tynes said, adding, “Soccer has become very big, so we have three different organizations that we may have in different parts of the town. Soccer is doing well. We have enough soccer to choose from.”

Summers-Johnson said the soccer program is doing so well that she has enrolled her own son in it.

“Currently, it’s at Orange Park on Saturday mornings, from 9:30 to 11:30, for ages like 5 to 13; my son just started and the coach is phenomenal,” said Summers-Johnson on Wednesday, April 26. “Just to walk to a field and see the cones and everything, it’s the look that I’ve been looking for, that I’ve been paying other towns to give my child and finally he’s getting it now. My son has never been able to go to the camp; he’s never been well enough to go, but he’s well enough this year. The reason why I wanted to send him to the Orange camps is because it has certified teachers half-day, which a lot of camps where I was spending $350 a week, it was play all day. So he will be able to not lose any of his education, preparing the students ultimately for PARRCC testing, they get to use Smart Boards, and all of those type of things. But just certified teachers to bridge that gap that kids lose in July and August. So I’m excited that he can go to the Orange camp.”

One attendee asked Tynes and Summers-Johnson about the town’s clay tennis courts. Summers-Johnson, Tynes and Hartwyck all responded to the question.

“We’re already on it,” said Summers-Johnson. “I took pictures. … I’ve already sent the picture to the (business administrator) and it’s going to be cleaned.”

Tynes said he had visited the tennis court earlier that day, too. Hartwyck said, “It’s not only going to be cleaned, but we’re evaluating the tennis courts for potential resurfacing.”

The last question Tynes and company fielded was soccer-related and came from a woman who wanted to know if all the soccer camps “would culminate to games and competition.”

Tynes said there would be games, adding, “We want to try to find a league, but right now, the high school coach, Coach Prophet, who runs the program on Saturday, he’s also going to two nights a week during the summer. He’s going to start on Tuesday and Thursday nights where, hopefully, we can have enough participants, so they’re going to play games.”

“It may not be a set team. Their teammates may vary each week, but they’re going to play a game. It’s not going to be all practice. We’re going to do that. It’s going to be somewhat like free play, like open play, where they can actually play games. Hopefully, we’ll have enough participants to where they can have set teams, but if not, they will play a game.”

For more information about the Orange Recreation Department, call 973-266-4001 or visit the city’s official website at www.ci.orange.nj.us.

  Jamie Summers-Johnson, Orange Recreation