When Athletic Business surveyed readers to get a pulse on the athletics, fitness and recreation industries in celebration of our 50th anniversary, leaders in community recreation made one thing abundantly clear: they want to grow their team sports programming.
In fact, an impressive 32% of respondents said they want to expand team sports leagues in their communities.
So AB dug deeper. What is the current state of team sports leagues in parks and recreation departments? How has that environment evolved from the days of grassroots games to today’s tech-savvy youth and adult athletes? What holds back further expansion? And how are parks and recreation departments responding to budgetary and technological restraints?
Managing and running team sports in-house is one of the most common programming solutions. Another is to outsource team sports management entirely.
Two parks and recreation programming leaders who spoke with AB represent each side of the coin. While they hail from departments in different regions of the country, with these vastly different programming styles, Alyssa Krueger, organized sports coordinator at Milwaukee County Parks, and David Johnson, recreation programmer at Baltimore Recreation and Parks, both agree that their main goal is for the public to have a good experience.
Johnson and Krueger spoke with AB to share their goals for the future of public recreation’s team sports leagues and break down current challenges, from budgets and public interest to equipment and facilities.
‘Solution-oriented’
Johnson arrived at Baltimore Recreation and Parks three years ago after a 13-year stint in non-profit youth sports. The specific challenges found in a government agency, compared to a non-profit, were immediately obvious to Johnson, but he continues to aim to enrich young athletes’ lives.
In Baltimore, all team sports are run directly through Recreation and Parks, which means that Johnson and his team coordinate facility rentals, equipment, coaches and team rosters. “It’s all through our department,” says Johnson. “We have a whole bunch of programming. I run the middle school sports portion of our athletics programs, but we have youth and high school basketball, softball, soccer, co-ed volleyball, flag football, 40-and-over basketball, 50-and-over basketball.”
The list goes on.
“We’re actually thinking of expanding our reach to do specifically girls’ flag football because there is a high demand for that growing sport,” Johnson says.
The vast majority of Baltimore’s youth team sports leagues come at no cost to the participant, but some adult leagues do charge fees to register teams. According to Johnson, all leagues focus on competition, with less emphasis on specific skills or lessons on how to play, but that is something he would like to see change.
“We are teaching [youth athletes] about how to lose gracefully, how to deal with adversity and things like that,” he says. “I’d like to see more emphasis on skill building, particularly life skills. I’d like to see more of that, to see coaches emphasize life skills and sport-specific skills more than ‘Let’s go out here and beat this team.’ ”
To build those teams, Johnson says outreach to local schools is critical. He makes it a priority to inform principals and athletics directors about the city’s team sports offerings, and he asks for their input on student needs, as well as their help in finding teachers who might want to volunteer as coaches.
“Our reach is only as wide as our capacity,” says Johnson. “One thing I’d like us to improve on is our advertising, because oftentimes, [people] aren’t aware that our programs are there. If people knew more about it, then our reach could be a little bit bigger.”
While outreach remains top of mind in Baltimore, Johnson also notes that transportation is among the department’s main obstacles. The city of Baltimore spans 92 square miles, and that can present a challenge in getting athletes to facilities. Especially for Johnson, who is managing youth team sports, he sees the daily struggle of kids forced to navigate bus systems or make long walks to arrive at their programming.
To that end, Johnson now utilizes fleet vans and some of the department’s part-time employees as drivers to get the kids where they need to go for games and practices.
He good-humoredly admits that Baltimore Recreation and Parks is not trying to become a transportation service, but he wants to see as many barriers removed as possible to introduce the galvanizing force of team sports to the lives of youth athletes in his city. Says Johnson, “I try to be solution-oriented.”
Photo courtesy of Baltimore Recreation and Parks
‘Stagnant is boring’
In Milwaukee, Krueger and her staff offer a different approach to team sports leagues. Rather than manage every aspect of the programming from her office, Milwaukee County Parks and Recreation partners with third-party organizations to run team sports. These organizations reserve Milwaukee County Parks and Recreation facilities, bring their own equipment and oversee their own rosters. Meanwhile, Krueger and the operations team maintain the facilities and manage permits and reservations.
“Our primary role is managing and providing public park spaces, athletics fields and facilities that are reserved and utilized by community organizations, leagues and other user groups, rather than directly operating a large number of team sports programs in-house,” explains Krueger.
Those leagues currently include pickleball, softball, basketball, tennis, volleyball, soccer and others for youths, as well as introductory adult and competitive adult leagues.
And while Milwaukee offers fewer team sports programs than other cities of comparable size, it does serve as the largest parks and recreation agency in Wisconsin, boasting more than 350 distinct athletics facilities that hosted over 15,000 team sports competitions in 2025. That number of rentable facilities creates a complicated schedule of rentals for Krueger to track. “[We’re having] conversations about our approach to managing athletics facilities, supporting community partners, and accommodating the growing demand for team sports through our reservation and permitting process,” she says. “At the end of the day, we’re very accepting of it, because it brings diversity and brings more people who can use the athletics facilities.”
The unique aspect of Milwaukee’s partnerships allows for these organizations to make upgrades to public facilities in exchange for advantageous use agreements. For example, Bryant and Stratton College’s women’s softball team uses Rainbow Park — a Milwaukee County Parks facility — as its home field. The team needed an outfield fence to maintain compliance with conference standards, but Milwaukee County Parks didn’t have the budget to add a fence to that property. “They took it upon themselves, fundraised around $20,000 and paid out of pocket to hire a vendor and put in a fence,” Krueger says. “It’s great because it’s an added amenity to the park that they call home. And we have a use agreement with the college that they get first rights to that field for their home games.”
Bryant and Stratton College has priority scheduling at Rainbow Park, but when the team has an away game or is in the offseason, the outfield fence now serves as an added benefit to youth and adult recreational baseball and softball leagues that may also reserve the facility.
In years past, use agreements came with stiff parameters, but Krueger has worked to do away with restrictive contracts. Instead, she prioritizes flexibility and transparent communication with third-party organizations to improve Milwaukee’s team sports programming quality.
“Under the signature in my email, there’s a link that says, ‘We need your feedback. Fill out this online form.’ Positive, negative, neutral, whatever ideas you have. Let’s talk about it. We’re open to it because, ultimately, I want to continue to grow. I don’t want to stay stagnant. Stagnant is boring. You’re not advancing into anything,” Krueger says. “I want to continue to make our practices better and better and better.”
To provide equipment or not?
Beyond the basics of scheduling and managing team sports leagues, Krueger and Johnson’s departments also take different approaches to equipment management, proving that there is no one-size-fits-all approach in public rec.
“We provide everything from the officials to the uniforms, equipment, trophies and awards,” Johnson says. “We foot the bill for everything.”
Providing all the necessary equipment can be a challenge for Johnson, who says that creating access to sports such as lacrosse, which requires more expensive equipment, is especially difficult. It is one of the main budgetary challenges he faces and a key difference between the government agency and the non-profit youth sports space where he began his career.
But in Milwaukee, Krueger explains, “We’re not in the business of providing equipment for organizations, at least for the outdoor spaces, because there are so many athletics spaces in parks that don’t have storage. Things can go missing. Our indoor facilities are a bit more manageable, and they can trace and track the equipment, so they do provide it.”
When community organizations reserve a soccer field in Milwaukee, the facility comes with a net and — in some cases — bleachers, but the community organization must provide its own corner flags and balls.
One of the most common equipment requests that comes across Krueger’s desk is for pickleballs and paddles — a request she has been able to fulfill for select organizations. However, Milwaukee County Parks does not plan to change its overall stance on providing sporting equipment.
Paper to digital
Despite the vast differences between operations in Baltimore and Milwaukee, both Johnson and Krueger can attest that technology has transformed their departments and workflows, and as recreation departments seek to expand team sports programming, technology could be a solution that is ripe for exploration.
Team sports can generate significant paper waste, from signup sheets to the forms needed to reserve a facility. The tracking of dozens of sports leagues can quickly consume whole filing cabinets.
“Over my tenure here, we are now on our third reservation program that we use,” says Krueger. “When I first started, there were binders with pencil and paper. You would have to go into the mailboxes of our operations department so that they would know a permit was scheduled.”
Eliminating reliance on binders filled with handwritten reservations and waivers is at the center of Mark Luckinbill’s mission as co-founder of SportReach, a company that offers team sports registration software and a digital home for sign-up sheets, payments, team announcements, waivers and communication. In particular, SportReach is booming with parks and rec departments that see the value in digitizing their team sports management.
“[In the past] a lot of things were done on paper, especially waivers,” he says. “Waivers have been on paper for a long time. We still see a lot of people who bring waivers to events.”
And it goes beyond the basics of pencil and paper. Luckinbill also believes that platforms like SportReach could eliminate the need for spreadsheets by allowing everything to live on one platform. “To this day, spreadsheets are heavily relied on, and sometimes for good reason, but we want to eliminate spreadsheets,” Luckinbill says.
Krueger agrees, adding, “I want to keep moving forward and make things more online accessible.”
Parks and recreation programming leaders should prioritize integrating registration management platforms that allow for flexibility. Individualized solutions that meet their licensing needs, payment options, and verifications for background checks, age and position can all ease team sports management workflows — even for departments, such as the one in Baltimore, that don’t charge for team sports leagues.
“Our offerings are free of charge to participants. All our programming is free,” says Johnson.
This digital revolution has also been key to spreading the word about team sports programs. In Baltimore, Johnson credits an increased social media presence for the growth of youth and adult team sports leagues there.
To inform the public of upcoming programs, Johnson uses both word of mouth and social media. “We have to be very communicative about what we have coming up with our marketing and communication team,” he says. “You get so many programs going at once, and so many different things to manage, that getting the information out to people can be tough.”
Krueger notes similar challenges for marketing team sports opportunities in Milwaukee, stating, “We don’t have a specific marketing plan for organized sports. Not yet.”
As her team expands, Krueger hopes to create an online database of rentable facilities, complete with photos, costs and links to reservation pages. It’s all in the name of creating seamless customer service for everyone in the community.
“If a user has to click more than three or four times to find what they’re looking for, they will drop off,” says Luckinbill. “What we like to say is we want to get the athlete registered and set up with all the information they need in as few clicks as possible, because a lot of the legacy platforms that exist today require you to really dig deep to get information and then connect yourself over to registration. In some cases, they even send you out to a third-party payment platform.”
Accessibility and ease of use are significant factors in Milwaukee, where Krueger is challenged to support disparate groups and provide access within one reservation system. “Today we are really customer service focused,” she says. “I want to have the flexibility of people to contact our office, but they don’t have to pick up the phone. I want to keep growing that so it is easier and more accessible for people.”
Sanctity of sport
From running team sports leagues in-house and managing all necessary equipment, to partnering with third-party organizations to run local team sports, parks and recreation departments across the country continue to find ways to keep the community active and engaged.
But many parks and rec professionals say there is still plenty of room for improvement. Johnson notes this especially as he witnesses the rise of pay-to-play groups in the youth sports space.
“A change I would like to see is an increase in recreation-based programming and not pay for play,” Johnson says. “Some of our young people are being priced out of basketball, football, volleyball, lacrosse. If you can’t afford to be on the travel team or AAU team, then you may not get the skills you need to advance further in your particular sport. I would like to see more grassroots sports programming instead of, ‘Pay me $300 and I’ll give you 17 hours of training.’ Or, ‘For another $1,700 you can travel with the team.’ ”
For Krueger, growth and change will require inspiration and collaboration.
“A lot of the state turns to me with questions because we are the biggest agency in Wisconsin,” she says, noting that it’s hard to compare Milwaukee to other cities nationally, because it is so different. “We have different climates, diverse populations. How do you compare Milwaukee County to Minneapolis or St. Paul? It’s a totally different culture, so what works for them doesn’t necessarily work for us.”
And Krueger has already seen some of that state-wide collaboration expand team sports in her tenure. “When I first started, we never did youth programming,” she says. “We only did adult programming.”
Krueger would also like to see increased investment to renovate aging athletics facilities, an emphasis on access to rec sports opportunities regardless of neighborhood, and stronger public-private partnerships for both youth and adult team sports.
While adult team sports leagues are an important programming piece for any city or municipality, Johnson’s focus will remain on the youth space.
“There’s a lot of competition, and I think we need to focus and emphasize skill-building, too. Not just sport-specific skills, but also life skills,” Johnson says. “Now, everything comes at a cost and for some who can’t afford to play, they get left behind. I think that has changed some of the sanctity and purity of sport.”
