Recreation program directors, counselors and children in Jay and Livermore Falls have made the best of the wet weather this summer.

Combined, 267 children have participated; 90 enrolled in Jay and 177 in Livermore Falls.

“We’ve had a great year except for the rain,” Jay Director Amanda Comeau said. “We’ve had to compensate with indoor sporting activities.”

Comeau is in her seventh and final year as director. She plans to move to Pennsylvania with her two children at the end of the week to join her husband who has taken a job there.

Participant attendance has been pretty consistent over the years, but there have been cuts in the program going from 14 staff members to 10, Comeau said.

“The weather has put a damper on things but we’ve made the best of it,” Livermore Falls Assistant Director Margaret Leclerc said Monday. “We have been using both gyms.”

They have programs going on at both the high and middle school gyms, she said.

“We keep the kids as occupied as possible. The fields have been wet and the football field has been off limits to us because it has been reseeded. We’ve done a lot of nature hikes. The kids love nature hikes. Sometimes there are 70 kids on a hike.”

It is the largest group of kids they’ve had in a long time, she said, and when they go on a trip there are usually 130 to 150 kids.

Both directors say their counselors do a great job with the kids. This week there are plans for trips to Funtown Splashtown USA in Saco.

“I kind of like it before lunch when all the kids ages 5 to 9 have lunch,” Amelia Pillsbury, 10, of Livermore Falls said of that town’s program.

The older kids get to have open gym at the middle school all to themselves and can talk and play, she said.

“I don’t have my brother crawling all over me,” Pillsbury said.
Jay program counselor, Jonathan Roix, 15, of Livermore Falls said the rain hasn’t bothered them too much. They just change up what they’re going to do. Instead of going outside, he said, they play board games inside.

dperry@sunjournal.com

Timmy Puemape, 11, left, and Bradley Maki, 7, both of Jay, play in the sand area outside the Jay Elementary School on Monday during the last week of the Jay Summer Recreation Program. The two were using their imaginations using leaves for money. Each leaf, according to Maki, was worth $1 million.

Brianna Gould, 11, right, of Livermore Falls, throws a Frisbee to Brandon Frey, 7, of Livermore, on the grass while Gould’s brother, Josh Strout, 8, looks on from a shed. The children were playing outside in a dry period Monday during the Livermore Falls Summer Recreation Program.

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