Cross country ban at Goddard Park lacks horse sense

Let’s just say there seems to be a lack of horse sense on the part of some officials at the state Division of Parks and Recreation when it comes to high school cross country runners conducting Saturday morning workouts at Goddard Park.

Maybe you have heard the story.

For a decade or so teams from North Kingstown, East Greenwich, Coventry, La Salle and a few others would hold early Saturday morning workouts on the fields and trails at Goddard Park.

“It’s a great place for the kids to run,” said veteran North Kingstown boys cross country coach Paul Tetreault. “The Saturday morning workouts tend to be a little longer, so Goddard Park is great because it got the kids off the roads on a softer surface, which is good for their legs.”

Goddard Park is a great place, a gem in the state system of public parks. It is 490 acres with a beach, picnic areas, fields and 18 miles of trails, which wind their way through woods and along picturesque Greenwich Bay.

So it’s a great place to run. Several high school teams use Goddard as their home course for regular-season dual meets on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons during the fall. It’s also the site of a few large weekend high school and college invitationals.

Goddard also is a great place to ride a horse. There is a privately owned stable in the park that offers riding lessons and rents horses for trail and beach rides.

For years the Saturday morning high school runners and the horse riders have coexisted without problems.

“There was never a problem that I was aware of,” said Tetreault. “There was no reason for there to be a problem. The stable in the park advertises it doesn’t open until 10 a.m. We ran between 7 and 9 o’clock. We always cleaned up and are out of there by 9:30.”

But in the spring of 2016, park officials distributed a notice of a policy change to the runners. It stated, “Due to increasing conflict between runners and horses on the equestrian trails” new guidelines were being instituted. The new guidelines said that cross country meets will only be allowed on Monday and Wednesday evenings from 3 p.m. until dusk during September and October. Also, “group team practices and group training, including Saturday morning, will not be allowed at any time.”

The notice also stated the trails were deeded to the state with the stipulation that their main use would be for equestrian activities. Some people disagreed with that.

“I went to Warwick City Hall and pulled the deed; it doesn’t say that,” said Brian McNeiece, the North Kingstown girls cross country coach. “Basically it says the land must be maintained for all the public to use.”

In July, while running with some members of his team at Goddard before the start of the regular high school season, McNeiece was cited for conducting an activity with more than nine people without a permit. He went to court and was fined $250.

The fine was paid with booster club funds, according to McNeiece.

McNeiece did apply for a permit so the teams could run on Saturday morning, but the permit request was denied.

“We are working with students here. We want to show them it’s important to abide by the rules, so we haven’t run at Goddard on Saturday mornings this fall,” said McNeiece.

But the ban on the Saturday morning workouts has some parents of the runners upset. They have created an online petition asking for support in their quest to let the team members run on Saturday morning. They say they have 7,000 signatures on the petition.

In a state where there are 40 lawyers for every 10,000 residents, it wouldn’t surprise me that in upscale communities such as North Kingstown and East Greenwich that there are a few lawyers among the parents group.

“This shouldn’t be one group against the other,” Tetreault said about the horse riders and runners. “The park officials said they are concerned about the safety of the runners. Of course the safety of our students is always our main priority. That’s one of the reasons we like to run at Goddard. We are getting the students off the roads on Saturday morning when the traffic can be busy.”

Indeed, granting a permit for 30-to-40 teenagers to participate in a wholesome activity between 7 and 9 a.m. on Saturday when the horse stable is not open would seem like a common-sense solution.

But it might already be too late for that. When I contacted the state Department of Environmental Management for its take on the matter, department spokeswoman Gail Mastrati issued this statement:

“Ensuring public enjoyment of state parks is core to our mission at DEM. We are working to address the concerns of all stakeholders in this matter. We cannot comment further given active litigation.”

With everything that’s happening in our country and our state these days, this certainly isn’t one of the most pressing issues on the agenda. But it seems that if people were willing to work together, talk to each other, just demonstrate some good old horse sense, the problem could be solved.