Forward Park Shines in Phillips

Forward Park in Phillips has been an on-going project for T-J and Jodi Podmalek, along with many other volunteers and donors.

“That whole project (has) been probably 18 years, heavy in the last five years” Podmalek said on Reality Radio on 98Q Country.  

“We have the three fields, the gardens, the volleyball courts, dog park, walking trail; then we have the three ball fields”.

“When it all started, I applied for a grant with Forward Bank, we received that, and started from there.
We tried to use all the local businesses we possibly could, so everything pretty much was done in Price County except for the bleachers”.

“TJ and I put in countless hours, but we have a lot of great volunteers that help out regularly, and then we have the coaches, concession stand workers,  umpires to keep the program going strong.”

What were the biggest obstacles in putting this big of a project together? According to Podmalek,
“I would say the biggest challenge is just coordinating everything. There was a few projects going on at the time.
We had to raise the one end of the park up over 18 inches. just to make it level. The whole reason this started is every time it rained, we’d have to cancel a game, even if it was just a few sprinkles, because there was no drainage and it just sat with a puddle. So that was our first thing we were going to do is fix the drainage, nd then it just kind of went from there.

The group continues to fund-raise to support maintenance and additions to the park

“We do a couple of big fundraisers. We do the winter golf classic and the calendar raffles.  Right now we’re doing our Mum fundraiser. People can go on our Facebook page to see how you order the Mums and then the funds go to our program.  

And then the last one we do is we work the Packer games.
We work five games this year. We’re given a booth and then a certain amount of funds come to us and then all the tips come to us.”

Podmalek said more projects are already underway at Forward Park.

“We’re working on the batting cage. AC carpet’s going to come down and glue that down for us. We have the pavers to hopefully finish up this year. We’re going to add the warning tracks to at least hopefully two of the softball fields this year.”

So the next time you’re in Phillips, stop by and check out Forward Park, located right next to the football field on Ballpark Drive!

Check out the complete interview with Jodi Podmalek HERE