Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

This is the first of what I hope to be many posts on your local parks. Being the father of three young children I often end up at one of the many parks in the area. If you have kids or like to get out and enjoy the outdoors as much as I do, I hope you find these useful.

The park I go to on a regular basis is Henry and Ola Park located in the Old Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa. This park is run by the City of Tampa, and as far as I can tell is named after the streets where it is located (no, I couldn’t find out who the streets are named after either).

One of the things I enjoy is that this place is popular with local citizens, and busy on a regular basis.  Henry and Ola hosts youth soccer on Saturday mornings, with adult soccer pickup games throughout the week. The main soccer field has been re-sodded in the past few years and is well maintained, so I can definitely see the attraction there. The city maintains the softball field and basketball courts, and are always well-lit.

The children’s area includes a playground with swings, a climbing wall and the new style jungle gym, but it would be much nicer with mulch or ground up tires in place of regular old Florida sand.

The city added new in-ground garbage cans to replace the aluminum ones that were constantly getting abused. In saying that, trash seems to still be a problem as it is not always put it into the cans. Whether in a park or on the streets, we encourage you to hold on to your garbage and drop it where it belongs.

Parking can be a problem when there is an event, but folks can use an overflow area for really busy times. The picnic tables could use an upgrade and it would nice if the playground included an area for toddlers.

Henry & Ola Park earns a C+

Possibly related posts (auto-generated)

• rivercrest park: right for picnics (0)
• no beer on sunday (2)
• may film fan fun (0)
• local film events this weekend (5)
• local book and author events for may (0)