Why Tracy is succeeding
26 Jun, 2007 By: Ron Hall Athletic Turf News
Tracy, the parks and recreation director of our small city of 6,000 souls, lives two houses down on our quiet street. He’s homegrown, born and raised here. He’s a good parks & rec director, dependable, pleasant and easy-going. Long-time residents here remember him as being one of the best basketball players (you could argue his two younger brothers were as good) that ever took the floor for the local high school. His size (6’6”) and prowess on the court helped earn him a degree of fame at a small Ohio college, and a pretty good education, too.
Before taking over as our city’s parks director, Tracy worked several decades in private industry, first as a manager in a local building supply business, then as the owner of a family sporting goods store.
Tracy became our city’s parks and recreation director about two years ago. He was chosen after the previous director got turned sideways with our city council. I couldn’t tell from the newspaper accounts exactly why the council was so displeased with him, but it seemed to be mostly a communications issue.
Almost every morning I see Tracy leave his home and climb into the aging, city-provided Ford-150 to begin his duties for our small town. Sometimes the bed of the rusting maroon pickup is filled with tools and materials.
After they let him go, they advertised the position with an annual starting salary of about $35,000. Resumes flooded, even at that salary. In the end, the city picked Tracy, the local guy. It seems to have been an excellent choice. Uncharacteristically in our small city, nobody’s squawked about the scheduling of city athletic events or the condition of the parks and ball fields. Not yet during Tracy’s tenure, anyway.
Certainly, he’s been conscientious in his duties and responsibilities (as were his predecessors, from what I could tell as a disinterested observer). But, I think the reason why he’s succeeded so well so far has more to do with his personality, his ability to get along with and get the cooperation of co-workers, city residents, community players/coaches and, most importantly, his bosses.
Is Tracy an expert on turf maintenance or the art of preparing, maintaining and repairing skin infields? Probably not. There is nothing in his background to suggest he is. Even so, given the resources he has to draw upon, the fields he is responsible for maintaining are safe for play and acceptably attractive.
As I’ve pedaled my bicycle around our small city I’ve seen Tracy and several helpers, sometimes city workers, sometimes youths, doing many tasks, from running the clock at the men’s winter league basketball games to stringing Christmas lights on the downtown street lights. His responsibilities go way beyond making sure the ball fields are mowed or the infield mix is spread and scarified before the next softball tournament.
But, mostly Tracy’s success in a job that several previous directors found frustrating seems to be as much (perhaps more) a result of his ability to get along and gain the cooperation of colleagues and the community than it is of any particular technical knowledge or skill.
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