FEBRUARY 2004

The choices can be endless when designing aquatic centers. But there are some helpful paths to navigate the options and make the best choices for your facility, whether you're starting from scratch, adding on or renovating a facility, great or small, indoors or out.

A good field is hard to find—unless you have the right design. We offer tips on how to select the best design for your fields, including cost-saving measures, layout strategies and a discussion on using natural and artificial turf.

Finding Mr./Ms. Right just got easier when it comes to matching the best architect and builder to your next construction project. Learn how checking references effectively, asking the right questions and going to the right sources will land you an architect or builder who can save you time, money and give you the results you're after.

Across the country, parks and recreation programs are sharing resources with other entities to get more bang for their collective bucks. We take a look as some of the better—and more fun-filled—initiatives.

You've decided to build a new playground. Or perhaps it's going to be "just a playground update," adding to existing equipment and bringing your play area up to CPSC and ASTM codes. In either case, you have a very big challenge ahead. Not only are there literally hundreds of choices in playground designs and color combinations, there's a wide variety of prices for what seems, at first, similar equipment.

In addition to toning muscles and losing weight, people are now exercising their minds and spirits as well. The result is that more people are incorporating yoga, tai chi and Pilates into their daily workouts—exercises that not only work the body but also the mind. They're building a total sense of wellness—physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually.

Organized youth sports programs have the amazing ability to bring out the best in children—and the worst in parents.

While the majority of today's parents are a supportive and caring group, there's an ever-increasing number who continue to cause major disruptions across the youth sports landscape with their negative and immature behavior that often escalates into physical confrontations and violent outbreaks.

Regardless of the sport or the age of the participants, the simple fact is that much of the childish behavior we're seeing in youth sports programs these days isn't from the kids on the field but rather from the parents in the stands.

Who says a small town can't think big? Not the residents of Sioux Center, Iowa. This northwestern Iowa town of 6,300 residents now boasts a recreation center with an indoor aquatic center and ice arena that can stand up to that of any affluent suburb.

Ten years after the initial feasibility study and concept, a long-awaited multicultural community recreation center opened in January in the small southwest Colorado community of Cortez. The 46,000-square-foot center was designed as the central component of Cortez's 100-acre "Parque de Vida," or "Park of Life."