By Trina Ortega
The Roaring Fork Re-1 School District this week will formally unveil a collaborative plan with the town to build an athletics field complex that would increase the play area for recreational sports and finally relieve the burden on the town’s limited number of soccer and baseball fields.
RFSD school board member Bill Lamont will go before the Carbondale Parks and Recreation Commission on Oct. 14 to present a concept that employs existing RFSD property and Carbondale’s grant-garnering muscle to fund a recreational master plan on property near RFSD’s three traditional public schools in Carbondale south. The plan includes softball/baseball fields, four tennis courts, two regulation-size soccer fields, two football fields, smaller soccer fields, several multi-use fields, and three sand volleyball courts.
“Carbondale clearly has a shortage of outdoor athletic fields with only the Delaney property at this time where the town is capable of adding fields. The other town parks are used to their capacity,” Lamont states in a facilities plan developed for the school district.
The plan provides a snapshot of RFSD outdoor athletic facilities and the community facilities currently in use by both the town and the school district. It details the capacity and condition of those facilities; their inadequacies; the demands placed on these facilities by RFSD’s interscholastic programming, club sports, physical education classes and recess and lunch periods; and opportunities and priorities for replacement and improvements, according to Lamont.
RFSD originally proposed a regulation size soccer field at its teacher housing project at Third Street and Capitol Avenue, near the Bridges Center. Once the school district confirmed it would not be economical to keep that size of field at that site, Lamont began identifying other locations for a soccer field, while at the same time looking comprehensively at the town’s five parks and respective athletic fields, too.
With more than 200 children in youth soccer leagues, numerous adult soccer teams, an estimated 38 adult softball teams, more than 50 kids in Little League, six flag football teams, 40 children in tennis lessons and an estimated 200 tennis players in town, ultimate Frisbee, rugby, lacrosse, bike polo, and other club sports, “Carbondale is a very active center for sports,” Lamont said.
“Right now, just about everything goes on at that Tiny Nightingale field” (north of Carbondale Middle School), Lamont added, and numerous club sports hold matches at the Bridges Center field.
“There is a heavy demand for fields in Carbondale that is not being adequately met,” he said.
The district will fulfill more of its goals by building tennis courts, sand volleyball courts, and adding backboards for basketball courts near the high school; installing a playground for the fifth- and sixth-grades at the middle school; opening up the grassy area at the elementary school for use as multi-purpose fields; constructing two field houses; and adding a system of pedestrian/bike paths throughout the complex.  
 A priority for the Carbondale Parks and Recreation Department has been to create additional soccer fields and ball fields. Recreation Director Jeff Jackel said the plan is a “wonderful idea regarding an opportunity for the school district and the town to partner together in collaboration to work on building a recreational facility that’ll be used by both the district and the town.
“This should meet Carbondale’s recreation needs, in my opinion, for the next 20 years,” Jackel said.
Lamont said the school district’s priority will be to build the four tennis courts, so the Roaring Fork High School girls tennis team has a place to practice and hold matches. The team currently practices at the Triangle Park/RVR courts. In springtime, the demand is high enough to warrant complaints from non-school tennis players.  
 The next step in the plan will be to move the RFHS baseball diamond to the North Face site. Once the fencing is removed from the current site near Crystal River Elementary School, the grassy area will be opened up and can be used for Little League and softball diamonds and multi-use fields, including a regulation-size soccer field.  
When any of the school district fields are not in use for school functions, they would be available for use by the public, much as they are now.
Lamont said the district likely would fund its portion of the plan through a bond issue. Jackel said the town’s funding would come from grants. But both agreed, the partnership and the well-thought-out master plan will be the key to garnering a large chunk of the money through Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO).
“I think pooling our financial resources in the tough economic times we’re both faced with makes a lot of sense,” Jackel said. “We’re hoping that we can jump start the whole program with this GOCO grant.”
They hope to have a master plan approved by RFSD and the town of Carbondale before the year’s out in order to apply for the GOCO funding and get the project going as early as 2010.
RFSD has hired Rich Camp Landscape Architect to create a design, and Camp is currently working on cost estimates.