Nantucket 8th Graders Urge Island To Pursue Indoor Recreation Facility

To the editor: We, three 8th-grade students, have recently been researching an issue in our community. Athletes, and all community members in general, have limited reliable indoor spaces to exercise. Whether they’re playing a sport, training for a marathon, or just trying to get active, citizens need a reliable indoor facility to exercise and stay active.

A solution, which has been mentioned before, is an indoor sports complex/ recreational facility. The reason why this would be so beneficial to our community is because of a complexes' reliability. They allow for people to do everything they could do outdoors, inside, where weather and other factors are not an issue. With this letter, we ask the Nantucket community to please support and help us push for the creation of an indoor recreational facility.

Madden Myers (high school student athlete and turf field advocate) stated in our interview with her, “An Indoor sports complex would help benefit our athletic community by increasing opportunities for student athletes and make practicing safer when athletes are nonoptimal to play outside.” The weather on our island is extremely unpredictable. This unpredictability causes practices and games for our sports needing to be rescheduled or canceled often. But, if we had an indoor sports facility, instead of rescheduling, we could relocate indoors. The athletic department works to find spaces for all high school and middle school teams but since there are so many teams and such a limited space, teams do not get the full practice they need.

The complex would not only increase opportunities for the younger people, but also provide older community members with a reliable facility to exercise. A space like this would provide people a place to walk indoors, participate in a fitness class, or lift weights. The facility could also be usable to our entire community at a reasonable membership price. There are countless more ways this complex would better our community.

In conclusion, we ask you, the community of Nantucket, to support and help us advocate for the creation of an indoor sports complex, for the benefit of all.

Sincerely,

Christine Haigh, Hadassah De Oliveira and Henry Browers