This month, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community’s Community Recreational Services (CRS) begins Recreation at Home, a collection of virtual activities for the entire family to enjoy Mondays through Fridays. The CRS team rallied together to come up with ways to connect with Community youth and their families after the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt on their services in early March. 

“First of all, we got together with our team and decided that with COVID-19 affecting everyone in their household with the stay-at-home order, we felt that it would be great to put on some activities for the kids to join,” said CRS Social Program Manager Sera Gould. “It’s been a tough transition [for them] from going to school to virtual learning, but now we want to provide some virtual fun activities. We looked at all aspects of how we can have the families and the children have some fun and exciting games to do as we start summer.”

The department is involving all its divisions: Aquatics, Athletics, Social Programs and the Salt River Tribal Library. They all worked together to come up with specific activities that they can teach virtually for the Recreation at Home program. The department created a calendar of activities that features each division.

“With the heat [and the way] children tend to be attracted to water, the Aquatics division will be kicking off the Recreation at Home calendar with a presentation on water safety,” said Gould. “The Athletics division will be taking part in doing some DIY crafts at home, family fun games, exercises and our new activity, which will be dance. We’ll be offering some hip-hop dance moves they can do at home.” 

For Social Programs, Recreation Coordinator I Ephraim Sloan will be sharing some basic basketball skills and drills. Recreation Coordinators Diedre’ Goodluck and Kaneesha Toney will be doing rock art, and the list also includes STEM activities with Recreation Coordinator Janyse Salinas. 

Gould added, “The Salt River Library will be starting off with a book challenge, nature art walk and a Lego building challenge.” 

On Fridays, all divisions collaborate for Fitness Fridays, featuring boxing, Arizona athlete and Ironman Wayne Sekaquaptewa, and Native American BJJ/MMA athlete Joe Tate. 

“Within all of these activities we just collaborated and focused on families, making sure everyone is safe on the Community and interacting with one another,” said Gould. “We are also collaborating with other departments and programs, such as the Young River People’s Council. We will be helping them with their Census count and just helping a lot and relying on one another. We are all in this together and reaching out to other departments to help [keep] everyone comfortable and busy as they enjoy the summer.”

Community Recreational Services started its own Facebook page at www.facebook.com/SRPMIC.WOLF/. This is where you can view all the Recreation at Home activities. An activity will be posted Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. and can be viewed at any time. 

“I am pretty excited,” said Gould about Recreation at Home. “I think the team did a good job working together from home; Skype was a savior in getting [people] together. Everyone had a lot of positivity and is looking forward to getting these activities out to the Community.” 

For more information on the Recreation at Home activities or Community Recreational Services, visit www.facebook.com/SRPMIC.WOLF/ or call (480) 362-6800.