Fallbrook/Ingold Sports Park facing huge deficits due to COVID-19, uncertain future

Fallbrook's largest community sports facility, Ingold Sports Park, is enduring financial difficulties brought on by restrictions imposed by San Diego County because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last week, the Fallbrook Sports Association, the nonprofit entity that manages the park, launched a fundraising campaign, hoping to raise some $100,000 to keep the park afloat.

"If the park goes under, nothing will happen with the sports park and no one in Fallbrook will be able to use it," FSA Board President Bryan Hanewinckel put it bluntly.

"The risk is the park closes down and the park goes back to the back to county air park land, and it is not available for use within the community unless somebody else takes it over.

"In the past there's been many conversations about the county taking us over, because there were early promises when the park was built that within 10 years, the county would take it over as a county park. Those promises had fallen short when they completed the riverwalk, they were going to take us over. And then if they ever opened up another county park here in Fallbrook, they would take us over as well and run us and acquire us. Of course, Horse Creek has been in construction and now they have a new one that's being built. And all that we've heard is, we're just a Pandora's box because now the county doesn't want to have a county park where there is leased land. They want to own the land. They don't want to lease the land.

"Members are just trying to keep the park alive for the community since it is one of our largest sports complexes in Fallbrook."

According to the GoFundMe page created by the association, the park "was a vision of two great men, Bob Ingold and Bob Hegardt, who along with a group of local sports enthusiasts selflessly wanted to create a facility for organized youth sports in our local community – a single place that could provide a variety of sports experiences for our children.

"As the only such facility within a 15-mile radius, the park now serves over 3,500 individuals weekly of all ages, from 5 to 85. We promote healthy lifestyles and enriching lives through facilitating sports and a variety of activities."

That all changed when COVID-19 struck.

"2018 was not the best year for the park," park manager Josh Guerrettaz, the only paid employee on staff, said. "I took over in December of 2018, but the park ran on a deficit for 2018 and in 2019. When I took it over, we actually made money and were able to replenish most of what we lost in 2018. Then 2020 was looking pretty, looking to grow even on the growth we had made in 2019. We had more bookings and more field reservations for more income than we had in 2019.

"Then the coronavirus hit and everything stopped. I mean the whole world stopped for a while, you know, but with youth sports and adult sports not being able to be opened for quite a long time, it really hit the park hard."

Currently, youth sports teams are allowed to practice with guidelines in place and that has helped a little.

"About two-thirds of our income came from our adult sports," Guerrettaz said. "Youth sports, while it's able to be there, is hampered by county ordinances and state ordinances and things like that. Regulations that don't allow them to scrimmage, play games, really do anything. While they get the practice, they have to stay 6 feet away from each other at all times. So it's baseball and softball. It's a little easier with soccer, which is one of our major tenants, but it's kind of hard to stay 6 feet apart and have a true practice."

Hanewinckel said the association filed for a PPP loan, but that hardly made a dent in what was being lost.

"Obviously we have paid staff at the park to run it," he said. "We qualified for that, but of course we have limited payroll. Our PPP loan was right around $22,000. Of course you had to use that within an eight week period and 75% of it had to go toward payroll and the other 25% could go toward rent and some operating expenses. We've well expired that fund.

"There were some grants in the beginning that we were unaware of, but the hard part for us in the early stages, when some of these things came out, was we were kind of being led by a leash from our county parks and rec director, saying, 'Oh, we're hoping that we can get this open and hoping we can get that open. Oh, they won't do tournaments. Oh, they won't have a reopening plan until the holiday, but we're hoping we're going to get more.'

"So, we were kind of being strung by, at least for the first two months, thinking, 'Hey, this is going to be a quick action, right?' Since youth sports was one of the ones that was on a table and that has completely fizzled out. I mean, we have zero direction that we'll be able to open the sports park until about a year's anniversary of the coronavirus."

Hanewinckel said it's taken a toll on the park's fundraising efforts completely.

"I did talk to Jim Desmond's office yesterday," he said. "There are no programs available with the exception of taking a loan. Being a nonprofit, that's very hard for us to want to take a loan or desire to take a loan. But it is an avenue that we're going to approach.

"We do have a GoFundMe account right now, that's been open for the past seven to 10 days. Originally our goal was $30,000, but as the board met on Tuesday, we felt that that was kind of a short ask. So, we increased our GoFundMe limitation to $100,000. Because again, we're trying to get to that March through May survival date in hopes that the county will allow us to open back up."

As of Friday, $3,035 of the $100,000 goal has been raised. To contribute to the fund, visit https://charity.gofundme.com/o/en/campaign/ingoldsportspark.

Jeff Pack can be reached by email at [email protected].