 Hello, Columbia. Welcome to our edition of Telling Our Story, Exploring the Parks. I am your host, Wanda Austin Herndon. Join us as we explore our parks. Hello, Columbia, and welcome to Telling Our Story, Exploring the Parks. Today, we are so excited to have our athletic coordinator, Doug Elliott. And Doug is going to tell us all about what athletics is about in parks and recreation. Well, we want to be comprehensive in what we offer. So we're not, we know we're landlocked, we know we're limited to, you know, serving patrons in the city. We want to make sure they have as broader experiences they can possibly have and we want to make sure there's not any stones unturned when we try to offer different sports for them. So we try to, you know, make sure that, you know, even the niche sports like lacrosse and tennis, some of the sports that our kids, particularly kids who live in the city who are socially economically challenged, won't have an opportunity to play. We try to give that to them so they have that outlet. And then there's no questions at the end of the day about what we have. The city of Columbia has sports for all ages, from three to 103. They have basketball, tennis, pickleball, swimming, kickball, black football, golf, lacrosse, baseball, and softball leagues. We do a miracle league program for our special needs youth out at Owensfield. It's been going good. Last four or five years we've grown. We've added two teams in the last year as well. So that's a growing program for us. Health wise, the ability to become social with each other, the obstacles that athletes experience and overcome, it's an innate ability to be able to transform their lives. It doesn't really matter. The skill set of a child, a young person, just get them involved. Our job is to introduce it. Once the innate ability that's in them comes out then they can truly fully experience it. Any adult who lives in the city or surrounded area, if you're missing an opportunity or you've played sports before in your life and you want to get back in it and you know you consider yourself a weekend warrior and you know we have all those opportunities in the city as well. For more information on any other athletic sports in our athletic department please contact us at 803-545-3100. Thank you for joining us today with telling our story. Doug, thank you again for coming out and joining us today. Thank you for having me Mr. Juan. Stay tuned for the next episode of telling our story exploring the parks. As with all our parks, our mission here at the City of Columbia Parks and Recreation is to change lives through a culture of transformational leadership, innovation and phenomenal customer service. Thank you for joining us today and please join us in the future for more episodes of telling our story exploring the parks and remember we are Columbia.