I am back, so lets save Union Hill Rink!

I have had this blog for a while, but I will admit I have never felt the urge to write that often (which is strange because I have done this sort of thing for a living). However, an issue has finally given me the impetus to at least get my sports blog up and going again. As I said before this will not be a one topic blog (i.e.: hockey). Now, I will say my favorite sports are hockey, soccer (football) and American football, but, I will write about anything.
Anyway, the first topic is one near and dear to my heart Union Hill Park inline hockey rinks. If you have never been there, one rink is covered with glass and sport court (to precise it is snap court) concrete and the other is concrete and open.
I have played at these rinks for 10 years that is hundreds of stick-time, league games and not to mention the New Year’s tournaments. I have also spent just as much time in the parking lot socializing. So, you can say I love these rinks.
Ok, last week I got the word that the Alpharetta Recreation and Parks Department (ARPD) wanted to trash the outdoor rink and turn the covered rink into a salt storage building! Yes, you read that right a salt storage building (I know it doesn’t snow here that often). The ARPD reason for scraping the rinks is that know one use them….rrrright.
I know that when I go their most times there are people skating on it and schools use it for practice. In this area there are not a lot of place you can just have a bunch of friends get a pick-up game going or drop into a game.
In the past there have been both adult and youth leagues at Union Hill. Now I can only talk about the league I played in and that is the Adult Over-30 league. Now we had a healthy league with six teams in the fall of 2010. Then for the winter of 2011 we are told by ARPD there will be no league. No reason was given and it must be said that is the prime season for inline hockey (because in Atlanta it is the best weather, which means it isn’t seventh level of Hell hot). So, my team, and most of the others moved to Pinckneyville Park in Gwinnett County.
Nothing against Pinckneyville, but most of us, for a variety of reasons, just likes playing at Union Hill better. Still after the ARPD could not (or would not) get a spring season together, it was back to Pinckneyville for most of us. However, we did entertain starting our own league in the spring, but just couldn’t get it together last minute, so a group of us planned to start a league in the fall if ARPD wasn’t up for the job.
So, a number of us are trying to save the rink. There are plans in the works to try to get a booster organization to run leagues out of the park. I also think we have made progress. On Tuesday, we had a rally the and had over 100 people show up to support the park and Channel 2 (WSB TV) and local media happen to turned up (wink, wink). So, tonight, I am going to the ARPD meeting and will blog about what happened. I am linking to the petition to save the rink and the faecbook page.
Petition:
http://www.change.org/petitions/we-need-to-save-union-hill-park
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Union-Hill-Park/154410214626971