WILTON — With Regional School Units 9 and 73 restricting the majority of their sports programming this fall, the Wilton Recreation Department is experiencing a spike in its fall sports enrollment.

Wilton offers soccer for kindergartners through eighth grade and field hockey for third graders up to sixth grade. Recreation Department Director Frank Donald said that he currently has five kids on a waiting list and has never seen such high enrollment for Wilton’s fall programs.

“In 31 years on the job, I’ve never turned a kid away even if they signed up a week into the season, but under normal times,” Donald said in a phone interview. “Boy, I hated to do it, but we waited as long as we possibly could and we went with as big as teams as made sense given the restrictions.” 

 

Wilton’s sports are open to all Franklin County residents, allowing kids to enroll from other towns such as Farmington where recreational programs have been canceled.

“We made the decision to cancel in-person programming, in-person youth sports this fall which would be our field hockey and soccer, those are our big ones,” Farmington’s Director of Parks and Recreation Matthew Foster said in a phone interview. “Typically we’d have about 250 kids involved with soccer, but we made a decision to do that based on state guidelines and recommendations with everything.” 

Farmington’s recreation department typically offers field hockey for grades 3-6 and soccer for kids as young as 3 years old up to sixth grade. Foster said that the department will be announcing virtual programming for the two sports within the next week that will take place over the month of October.

To adhere to Maine’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) Guidelines and the Maine Principal’s Association (MPA), Wilton had increased the number of soccer teams and is utilizing baseball fields for practices to help spread out players. Donald said that teams average about 10 athletes per coach and that this year, he had to find 9 coaches for soccer plus several assistant coaches. Field hockey had less of a demand with about 20 kids signed up and two coaches.

By maintaining social distancing, hand sanitization and tweaking game rules, Donald said that the recreation program is able to adhere to CDC and MPA guidelines. Some changes to soccer include banning slide tackling and throw-ins, limiting 5 people per team on the field for corner kicks and more rigorously enforcing blue lanes for youngest players to follow.

In addition to changing game rules, Donald said that the money Wilton has received from the Keep ME Healthy grant will help enforce guidelines. A large portion of the grant that Town Manager Rhonda Irish applied for will go towards the recreation department’s programming.

“This particular grant that we have received is a total of $41,646 and the main purpose as I said, is to help promote healthy outdoor activities,” Irish said at the select board meeting, September 15. 

The grant requires a compliance monitor to be present at recreational areas to ensure spectators and players adhere to CDC guidelines. Donald said the town has already hired a monitor who is present at games to remind people to social distance if they are not from the same household. So far, Donald said that spectators have needed more reminders than the kids.

“The kids have really adapted much better than we thought they would to staying spread out because they’re getting that reinforced if they’re going to school, they have to deal with that on a regular basis,” Donald said. 

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