Meet New Melrose Recreation Leader Mike Kent

With a large increase in participation in programs—from 2,500 children in 2007-2008 to 11,500 this past year— replacing multiple part-time, seasonal positions used to manage individual programs with single full-time assistant recreation director.

That new position was included in the approved city budget for next year, and the Recreation Department has hired Mike Kent, a 2005 graduate of , to serve as the city's recreation leader.

One of five brothers, Kent played football and baseball at Melrose High School and happens to be the grandson of Mary Foley, the crossing guard who died pushing children away from a speeding car, for whom is named.

Kent graduated from Merrimack College, where he also played football, with a degree in political science.

Melrose Patch sat down with Kent recently for a quick Q&A about his background and his new role in the Recreation Department.

Melrose Patch: Tell me a little bit about your background, where you’re from and what you were doing before you came here to the Recreation Department.

Mike Kent: I’m from Melrose, I was born and raised. Before I came here I was working in the school system a little bit. I was substitute teaching in the middle school and high school for a couple of years, I was coaching football and baseball, so I was around. I was also working for LifeLine Ambulance as an EMT just before I got this job.

MP: What made you decide to apply for this new position once they came up with it?

MK: I love working in Melrose. When I was in the school system and everything, it’s so close to home, I know so many people here. I love this community. So anything that came up in Melrose, I was going to look for. With my political science degree, going into municipal government was something that I’d like to do. I always wanted to be, like I’m saying over and over, in the community. Then, recreation: I’m a big sports guy, I’ve loved working with kids and sports together already, so it just seemed like an absolute perfect fit. And so far it feels like it. I couldn’t be happier this last month being here. Absolutely great. It doesn’t even feel like working.

MP: You get to play with kids all day.

MK: (Laughs) Exactly. I feel like you can’t beat it right now. I’m very happy.

MP: Tell me a little about the position, as it’s a new position, and what kind of tasks you’ll be taking on this summer and how you’ll be working with Frank.

MK: As you can see on the board here (pointing to a whiteboard in the Recreation Department office), this is mostly all the stuff we have going on this summer. What’s going to happen is, as a chain of command, I’m going to be below Frank, so I’m going to be overseeing a lot of this stuff. All the staff that we have down in the Common Park, I’m in charge of. I’ll be overseeing them, making sure everyone’s there, making sure they know what programs they’ll be running. Working with the parents and kids themselves, I’ll be registering them, notifying them of any cancellations, let them know if things are running. If anyone wants to transfer programs, they can talk to me and Frank, but I think we’re going to try and lighten his workload and heavy mine right now with a lot of the stuff like child programs and youth programs.

MP: Obviously you’re new this year, but what’s some new stuff that might be coming on board this summer that you’re excited about?

MK: I’m not positive exactly what’s new, he kind of threw it up there (on the board), because I didn’t know exactly what was going on last year—I wasn’t looking into it, I don’t have a kid yet to sign up for these (laughs). I know right now that with the park programs, I know when I was growing up when I’d go down the parks, there really wasn’t anything organized. It was kind of you’d go down there and it’s a free-for-all. You can play whatever you want, basketball, tennis, anything, which we still have that. Anyone can show up at any time down there. But now we have programs set up from 10:15 a.m.-2 p.m. where kids sign up for it and you know you’re going down there and you know you’re going to play basketball. You know there’s going to be a bunch of kids down there to play with. When before, it was kind of you’d show up and hope there were kids there. If there two or three kids there, you’re kind of limited in what you can do.

So just from when I was a kid and when I was in high school in that parks program, to where it is now, it’s really all Frank who did it. I think he did a tremendous job. If I were a kid right now, I’d love to go down and sign-up for all these things. It used to be spread out at every park. The Lincoln School had one, Gooch, they all had park instructors. Now we’ve zeroed in on the Common, so instead of four or five kids at each park, you have 35 together at one place. I think that’s a lot better. It’s getting more kids together, and if a kid goes to Lincoln School, he’s in third grade, all he really knows is those Lincoln School kids. If you go to Lincoln School you’re going to be with the same kids. This gives you an advantage where you can meet kids that go to Roosevelt, or Hoover, any other elementary school and you can connect before middle school. So when you go to middle school, you already know these kids because you’ve been playing with them all summer. It’s really a great way to bring the community together and get more friends, people knowing each other for a longer time. I think that’s a great idea.