Let play fields light up kids' future

In the spring of 1996, when our daughter was in kindergarten, my wife learned from the other moms at Bryant Elementary that everyone played soccer for LVR (Laurelhurst-View Ridge-Ravenna Youth Soccer) and that we needed to sign up.

Because I had spent my life playing (and watching and loving) the beautiful game, I was coerced easily into signing on as coach. Several months and $40 later, on a Sunday in August, I met for the first time with 12 6-year-old girls under the big willow tree at the south end of Dahl play field. I was the coach, they were the team and they (and their parents) looked at me as if I was supposed to know what I was doing. I hadn't a clue.

Those first-graders are headed to high school this fall, and over the past 8 1/2 years I have lost count of the games played, the goals scored, the practices practiced and the oranges eaten. We are now the parents of teenagers, 13- and 14-year-old girls who are fortunate to live in a city that celebrates a vital, active lifestyle -- and at a time when there are virtually no barriers to their participation in organized sports.

A recreational soccer player, my daughter has played with the LVR Blaze for eight years. For me, a volunteer coach and proud dad, it has been pure fun. All of us -- girls, parents, siblings and grandparents -- have grown to love our time together. We have shared wins and losses, the deaths of family members, the births of siblings, divorces and marriages. Through LVR Youth Soccer and the Seattle Youth Soccer Association, we have grown into, and become a part of, a community.

So it's no surprise that I wholeheartedly support the Sandpoint/Magnuson Park plan to develop lighted sports fields on 37 of the 288 acres, and I hope that soon the City Council and Mayor Greg Nickels will put an end to the delaying tactics of a few.

My daughter and her teammates will probably never play, as kids, on the fields that will be built at Magnuson, but perhaps their children will. I imagine them continuing the traditions we have started on our team. Like us, I see them wearing crazy shorts on the last day of each season, putting ribbons in their hair and painting their faces with LVR blue. More important, I think -- no, I know -- that the greater traditions we have established over eight years will be a part of their team. Each year they will welcome new friends, cherish old ones, support one another through tough times, pick up the trash when leaving and offer a hug on a bad day.

This is what the Sandpoint/Magnuson plan means to me, lights and all. It is about building community. The plan presents us with the opportunity to re-create a majestic park for children for generations to come. Many of us who live, work and play in and around the park are enthusiastic about its development and the positive impact it will have on our children, our neighborhood and our lives.

We are shamelessly advocating for our children and our future. I sincerely hope that our elected officials will consider carefully our children, our future and not support the naysayers and NIMBYs who in the past decade fought transitional/low-income housing at the park, who fought dog lovers looking for a place to bring their pets and who now fight a place where our children can safely play the sports they love. Enough already -- let's get it built.

Pat Hegarty lives in Seattle. Submissions for First Person, of up to 600 words, can be e-mailed to editpage@seattlepi.com; faxed to 206-448-8184 or mailed to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, P.O. Box 1909, Seattle, WA 98111-1909.

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