East Longmeadow recreation director elected head of Pioneer Valley Park and Recreation

Date: 1/2/2015

EAST LONGMEADOW – Director of Recreation Colin Drury was recently named president of the Pioneer Valley Park and Recreation Association for a one-year term in 2015.

“Initially I was just a member of the association but we actually lost our president,” Drury said. “Our president was Ray Ellerbrook and he passed away after a 10-year battle with cancer and the association kind of didn’t know what to do and we were kind of not really active for a year.”

Drury said earlier this year he sent out a general email to the other 24 members of the association in order to keep it moving forward. At the group’s December meeting Drury was elected president.

“Ray was very important to all of us,” he added. “Ray’s actually my mentor in recreation. He was always one of the people I looked to for, ‘Hey, I’ve never done this before. I need help’ type of situation.” 

Ellerbrook is considered the grandfather of recreation throughout the local region, Drury explained. Ellerbrook was also a star guard on the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) men’s basketball team in 1969.

“He’s one of those guys that if you grow up in Western [Massachusetts], even if you’re just learning about UMass basketball, he’s one of those names that’s out there,” Drury added. “Obviously you’ve got Julius Erving as one of the larger names but Ellerbrook and Erving, ‘the double E’s’ they may have called them back then.

“So you learn about him athletically, but more importantly, with recreation,” he continued. “He’s one of the people that actually in Northampton, which is where he spent a greater part of his career, was one of the people that went to a registration based recreation department as opposed to everything being included with the taxes. So, [it was] essentially having the user groups assist the Recreation Department into putting on those programs.” 

Drury said one of his goals as president is to connect local park and recreation organizations to state and regional ones such as the Massachusetts Recreation and Park Association and the New England Park Association to share up-to-date information related to recreation.

“The New England Park Association does a turf day, that’s an event that I would like to be one of the sponsors of, to bring our membership out to the spring turf day,” he added. “And what that does is it educates recreation and park directors on the latest and greatest equipment and methods for field renovations [and] methods for programming.” 

Another event is the Massachusetts Recreation Conference at UMass in March 2015, which will include about 200 representatives of recreation organizations throughout the state.

“I’m trying to have a larger membership of Western Massachusetts that is represented at the conference,” Drury added. “I worked with the Massachusetts Recreation and Park Association to get that conference out here in Western Massachusetts. Sturbridge is as close as it’s really gotten so I’m really excited it's going to be out here.”

Drury said recreation organizations in Western Massachusetts have not been represented well in past conferences.

“We haven’t had many people,” he added. “When it concerns our amount of people, I’d say we have about 25 people that are really active in the Western Massachusetts side of things. If we’re 25, at our conferences we have over 200 people show up for it. We’re an eighth of the people of who show up so what I’m trying to do is make sure that our membership is seen and that we’re getting the same opportunities that everyone else is getting.”

In 2013, the Pioneer Valley Recreation Association also spearheaded a one-day renovation of Blackman Field at Heritage Park in East Longmeadow in October 2013.

“We came in; we dug out the mound, dug out the catcher’s box and batter’s box and redid them,” Drury added. “We threw it out to everyone in the state, whoever wanted to come out.”     

Through a contact at a conference, Drury said he was able to invite AAA groundskeepers during the renovation to teach other communities about field maintenance.

“Our DPW (Department of Public Works) as well as Longmeadow and other towns, they sent their DPW workers and directors came and we all sat there and were educated by AAA groundskeepers,” he explained. “And the byproduct of the event was that our end field was completely redone in one day.”

Drury said the Pioneer Valley Park and Recreation Association would also advocating to state legislative officials as well as state and regional recreation organizations for local aid.

“Recreation departments; our goal is to create a fun, safe, educational environment but on the flip side of that is to do it at the lowest cost possible,” he added. “If you start cutting local aid, it can obviously cause strain on families that might not have the funds to have their kids play sports or play activities or go to camps.”