Councilmember Charles Allen (Ward 6) is introducing legislation today to make it easier for youth sports leagues to secure permits for games and practices on DC-owned fields, recognizing leagues are squeezing two or three teams onto one field on weeknights regularly and struggling to reschedule rainouts. This means the kids participating have a subpar experience and families leave the leagues or youth sports in the District altogether, undermining a popular experience many DC families want to give their children.  

“Talk to any parent or sports league volunteer and they’ll tell you the same thing: we don’t have enough field space in our city. While I want the District to be creative in building new fields, we’ve got to use the fields we have smarter and better. I want kids in DC to have a great experience learning to play sports and being part of a team. These leagues struggle to secure enough fields in order to hold practices and games, especially when successful leagues have hundreds of kids signed up,” Councilmember Allen said. “DC is an active city, and the demands before DPR are complicated. This bill says we want to be sure our kids are a priority during the hours they can participate.” 

The Department of Parks and Recreation Field Priority Access Amendment Act of 2024 takes two approaches to increasing youth sports leagues’ access to DC-owned fields. First, it proposes standardizing youth sports leagues under one umbrella and giving this group priority booking during afterschool hours in the early evenings and on weekends.  

Second, it makes DC Public School outdoor fields more readily available, recognizing in a dense city, we need to use every available field rather than leaving it empty and unused behind a locked gate. There simply are not many spaces available to build new fields, so we must increase access to the ones we already have.  The bill includes ways to ensure DCPS fields are still first and foremost available for school athletics use. But making these taxpayer-funded fields more consistently available when they are otherwise sitting empty is an easy way to improve the youth sports experience overall. 

To ensure that leagues are prioritized to serve DC youth and families, those that qualify for prioritized booking cannot “cut” kids from participating and must offer ways to waive or lessen fees for families to participate. The goal is to prioritize the leagues which are most inclusive of all kids in the community.  

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