Operation Backpack gearing local students up for the next school year Optimist Park getting a little TLC

Lennoxville’s Optimist Park is largely out of service for the summer as a part of an effort to restore the playing surface of the sports field. According to Christopher Fowlis, Manager of Bishop’s athletic facilities, the work is part of an effort to counteract problems stemming from the last major flood but also a look towards returning the space to more regular use.

“Before coulter field was built, our rugby and lacrosse teams were playing there on a regular basis,” Fowlis said, noting that rather than have the field be a competition space, the hope is to make it a focal point for intermural sports and club activities.

Before that can happen, however, the play surface itself needs to be restored.

“There have been problems with the field ever since the last major flood,” the facilities manager said. “We had too much silt on it and the grass wasn’t coming back properly.”

After several years of partial attempts to re-seed, Fowlis said that the university has opted to work together in a more intensive way to revitalize the grass.

“The reason why there is a fence on it is because people were still using it after the field was closed,” he said, pointing out that the continued use and the lack of significant rain so far over the spring and summer has made the work a little bit more complicated than expected. “It hasn’t started off too well.”

Due to limitations on the amount of fence available to close off the space, Fowlis said that only the most hard-hit parts of the field have been closed off, but that still more-or-less renders the space unusable to the ultimate frisbee and rugby groups that have been in the habit of playing in the park in summers past.

“We were hoping to be done for the beginning of September but now it’s looking more like maybe mid-september,” he said. “The fence will be there for the summer: we have to protect the field and our investment.

“The plan is to keep it in better shape from now on,” Fowlis added.

SHARON MCCULLY Operation Backpack team members Debbie Harrison, Daphne Nelson and Cheryl Graham prepping supplies for 30 Lennoxville Elementary and 80 Alexander Galt Regional High School students for their return to school in September. (Absent from the photo are Jane Operation Backpack committee members Jane Loiselle and Sharon Mccully.)