14-17-REC DEPT HIST
6/2/10
2:42 PM
Page 4
17
as well and I guess we know how that turned out.” Led by Hendricks, who attended Hialeah High School because Miami Springs Senior High didn’t open until the 1964-65 school year, Caudle’s basketball team won the 1961 county championship. Caudle called it “a really special time for everyone.” It’s guys like Caudle who donated their time to coach one sport or more who really have helped create special times for the kids. Another was Tony Bray, who coached football, baseball and soccer in the ’60s and ’70s. “I remember we literally had a waiting list of people that wanted to coach,” he said. “It’s so hard today to find anyone willing to give up their time anymore to help develop kids, and that’s really sad.” It’s not just coaches who deserve mention, though, because it takes a lot of people to make a recreation program run. And it starts with the recreation director. The list of those who have served Miami Springs in that capacity through the years includes names like Art Peavy, C.C. Jones, Ray Stoltz, Ray Lopez, Allen Ricke, Pat Perry and the current recreation director, Omar Luna. Gorland served on an interim basis before Luna was hired earlier this year. “Having a recreation program was so important to me and everyone around me growing up, no doubt about it,” he said. “You can never take away those wonderful memories that you get from your formative years and the rec program is where you got a lot of those.” The focus of the recreation program undoubtedly is on sports, but that’s not all there is. There are summer camps for kids, afterschool and school holiday programs, and special events such as the Fourth of July parade, the Easter Egg Hunt, the End of Summer Luau and the Haunted House at Halloween. In short, at one time or another, everybody will have a chance to benefit. Just like it’s been happening for more than 50 years. That’s something Borgmann reflected on after the opening of the new community center. “Something like a recreation program plays a major part in the formulation of your childhood memories, and I certainly had plenty of mine,” Borgmann said. “And now to see this new building going up after all of the hard work so many people put in to make it happen, brings back all of those wonderful memories. And I can only hope that there will be kids who enjoy our new facility that will create as wonderful memories as I had.”
On their way to the 1966 state championship, the Miami Springs Senior High School girls and boys swimming teams enjoyed “home pool advantage” as the state finals were held at the Miami Springs Recreation Center.
With coaches Jim Caudle (top left) and Larry Condon (top right) at the controls, the 1962 MS Optimist 113-pound team won the county championship. Below, City Manager Jim Borgmann, who enjoyed the rec center as a youth, stood alone one day to say goodbye to his “old friend” just before the walls came down last fall.