Fighting slimy snakes and cleaning up flood damage isn’t part of Joanne Bishop’s official job description as recreation coordinator for the Community Recreation Board, but that’s what she had to do to make soccer fields usable this spring for the recreational soccer season.
In recognition of her efforts, Kiwanis Club President Tom Tinsley came to Wednesday evening’s Community Recreation Board meeting to present Bishop with a letter of thanks, a $100 gift card, and orders to spend the money on herself, not the sports programs.
Board members didn’t know in advance why Tinsley asked to be on their agenda.
“I’d like to keep everybody in suspense and say we had a complaint on Joanne, but I can’t do that,” Tinsley said. “The Kiwanis Club is so appreciative of Joanne’s efforts this year; I can’t imagine how she could put a soccer program together and carry it out with all the adverse conditions we had. That was terrible, but the program went good.”
Bishop said there were major problems after floods hit Waynesville and knocked most of the soccer fields out of commission. While Fort Leonard Wood made fields available, Bishop and volunteers tried to repair the Waynesville fields as best they could.
“We had snakes and salamanders down there,” Bishop said, noting that her volunteers had to remove an entire sandbar from one soccer field.
“That week that we spent down there rescuing park benches and soccer goals, it was wild,” Bishop said.
Bishop said one group of young volunteers started screaming at the top of their lungs when they found snakes living in the U-8 soccer goals after the floods.
Community Recreation Board Charles Kristek said the Waynesville City Council has approved buying equipment to open up two new fields.
“The ball is in motion; decisions have been made,” Kristek said. “Now, instead of waiting on votes and red tape, now we are waiting on mother nature.”
Despite the problems with Waynesville’s fields, Recreation Board member Edna Givins said some communities against which local teams compete are much worse.
“I know we have some of the best fields anywhere; people from other towns never complain about our fields, but we sure have problems with some of the other fields,” Givins said.
Several soccer coaches agreed.
“We appreciate coming home; we appreciate practicing where we practice,” said soccer coach Michael Wright.
Soccer coach Scott Leonard said there’s one field for another community on Highway 28 where a pipe is sticking up in the middle of the field.
A third soccer coach wrote a letter to the Recreation Board saying Bishop does an excellent job but said it’s unfair for Bishop to do her work part-time and should become a full-time employee.
Bishop, a retired Waynesville coach and physical education teacher, is a member of the Waynesville Park Board and was that city’s appointee to the Community Recreation Board until she applied for and was hired as its part-time recreation coordinator.
Kristek said it’s important that the Waynesville-St. Robert Community Recreation Board acknowledge the hard work of Bishop and the Waynesville Park Department, and said the consequences of poor field maintenance could be a disaster.
“There are fields where I’ve cancelled games because there were rocks in front of the goals and people could get hurt,” Kristek said.