Bayfield recreation officials will soon incorporate two new portable basketball hoops as the town grows its youth basketball camp presence.
The town of Bayfield is using $14,000 from its 2024 budget to pay for the two hoops, which would be added to the gymnasium at the old middle school building. The town leases out the gym to hold activities like youth basketball camps.
“Any equipment we add to that gym, we need to be able to get it out in case we don’t lease it anymore,” Recreation Director and Town Clerk Dustin Hayden said, adding the town will lease out the gym for at least one more year. “ … Our recreation youth programs are growing every year. This year, they grew about 15%. … There’s the demand.”
The recreation department’s youth basketball camps are held during late winter and early spring.
Hayden hopes the new portable hoops will arrive by late August or early September, depending on how long it takes for the manufacturer to ship them out. The recreation department looks to decide on specific models sometime after July 4.
Hayden said the two basketball hoops, ranging from 6 to 10 feet high, will be free-standing and adjustable instead of being drilled into a wall. He also said the town is still sorting out logistics, such as whether the new free-standing hoops will be the type featuring a bottom tank filled with sand or water to keep them from tipping over.
“These two have to be mobile,” he said. “You put them to run two courts at once, you put them across the other one. That’s over by the bleachers, so there’s nowhere to screw them in. They need to be free-standing on their own.”
And whenever other activities like adult volleyball and adult indoor soccer are held at the gym, the idea is that the portable basketball hoops can simply be moved over to another part of the gym.
Should a child or group of children want to use the portable hoops when a youth basketball camp is not taking place, Hayden said family members would need to contact the recreation department to rent out the gym so they can supervise their children.
The old middle school gym, which is the current site of Pueblo Community College Southwest – Bayfield at 110 E. South St., already has two retractable basketball hoops that are drilled into the wall.
“They’re just old and antiquated and need to be improved. They’re metal, they’re cumbersome,” Hayden said. “We just need some newer, better models that fit our gym better.”
mhollinshead@durangoherald.com
