Like all parents, Mott Park resident Ryan Beuthin spent significant time during the COVID-19 pandemic simply trying to think of ways to restore some sense of normalcy for kids cooped up indoors and in need of social outlets. He and another Mott Park resident, Chad Schlosser, decided to make use of the neighborhood’s beautiful park and outdoor space for a loosely organized hangout.
“During COVID, these kids had been inside for a really long time, not seeing their friends, and just a few neighbors wanted to safely get kids together and out of the house,” said Beuthin, who has lived in Mott Park for about 15 years. “It started off as just going to the park, we all pitched in for pizza and just grabbed a ball to throw around.”
That informal gathering included a few neighborhood kids and families and began to evolve into something a little more organized from there. The group decided to make game nights on Tuesday nights an official weekly occurrence, get pizza, and loosely structure each one with something active.
“I think the next week, we had nothing going on, so we just sort of decided on Tuesday nights we’ll come to the park, pitch in for pizza, come up with some game like throwing a football around or playing tag, nothing fancy,” Beuthin said. “It really just started from parents and neighbors wanting the kids to be doing something fun outside.”
That tradition has not only continued post-pandemic, it has also evolved to include more kids and neighbors, different types of activities, and even partnerships with organizations who come in and help with programming. Mott Park Game Nights begin each May and usually run through the end of October on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. at the Mott Park Clubhouse. Information is typically available on the neighborhood’s Facebook page. Organizers also do a yearly GoFundMe campaign to raise enough money to be able to buy pizza throughout the season.
“The GoFundMe has been a cool way to get some of the people in, in the neighborhood who can’t maybe come out to a game night but still want to support and be a part of it involved,” Beuthin said. “It gives them a chance to participate and feel like they’re contributing to something. It just started with parents and neighbors wanting the kids to be doing something outside and good. It’s really been cool to see it grow.”
Beuthin said the game nights have evolved to include partner organizations, like the Crim Fitness Foundation and Genesee County Parks. Their involvement has created more diverse activities and opportunities for kids, and it also relieves volunteers of having to come up with new ideas each week.
“Since it was always just volunteer neighbor-led, we didn’t have a lot of time to do things like coordinating and planning and designing programming,” Beuthin said. “So the best we could do is try to make sure we had enough money for pizza and didn’t run out of ideas of stuff to keep us busy. But when people like Genesee County Parks or the Crim came along, that adds that extra luxury of brainpower, creativity, and ideas or exposure to different things. To have people who excel at this stuff lend their expertise adds a really cool part to it.”
In addition to sports and typical outdoor games, game nights have also included introductions to things like fishing, birding, archery, chess, art, and more.
Game nights have given kids in Mott Park a weekly outlet since their inception, but they’ve also provided a good way for parents and neighbors to get to know each other.
“It’s such a predictable and regular thing now that it helps weave together some things in the neighborhood that maybe wouldn’t just naturally happen,” Beuthin said. “We found out a guy in the neighborhood has an inflatable company. We were looking for things to play that aren’t tag every night. And so it was like, well, he has inflatables and then we have a little bit of funds we could put towards a water slide night. And then we met someone in the neighborhood (Glen Simmons Jr.) who did photography, and now he helps plan and takes photos at game nights. The regularity of game nights pushes us toward those connections. People just see us out there and swing by and we meet them that way. And because they’re so informal people can just join in. We usually just try to get pizza and some ideas for a game, but the kids take care of the rest. But that starts to bring around a lot of great people who add great things to it.”
Although official game nights pause in late fall and winter, there are still times that the community connections allow people to get together in the winter too. They’ve done occasional movie nights in the clubhouse, or even got groups of families who have met at game nights together to go sledding on specific days when it’s cold out.
Mott Park has a lengthy history in Flint, with many people who have fond memories of vibrant activities in the park growing up there years ago. Beuthin hopes that game nights are a way to keep that affinity and pride in growing up there alive for new generations of kids.
“You meet so many people with different good memories of Mott Park over the years,” Beuthin said. “A lot of times, we would encounter somebody who was raised in the neighborhood decades ago, and they’d be like, ‘Oh man, back in the day Mott Park was so great.’ They remember it as such an epic place to grow up. And part of our thinking is what if we could make future generations jealous in a funny way? So someday these kids will say, ‘You should have been there when we were growing up in Mott Park because that was the place to be!’ So we think about what we can do to create those memories now.”
Game nights are part of a larger ecosystem of changes in Mott Park that have had a positive impact on the neighborhood since Beuthin and his family moved there. The former Mott Park Golf Course has been converted into a nature area that includes a disc golf course, wildlife, and will soon be connected to the under construction Flint State Park that is set to be completed next year. He said that early on, there seemed to be a lot of negativity and frustration that people expressed on neighborhood social media pages, but that tone has changed with time.
“Even just on social media, you’d see the Facebook page used more like a neighborhood watch page, it was always like, ‘I see some kids walking around, what are they doing?’ Well, they’re not doing anything, they’re just walking around,” Beuthin said. “What has been nice is through things like this (game nights), we see so many people joining in and doing their own cool things or events here (in the park), that it’s started to shift the tone on social media, at least in this neighborhood. Now you see a lot of people say, ‘Man, I can’t even keep up with all of the cool things happening!’ And you’re still looking out for each other when there are problems, but it feels like the narrative of who we are as a neighborhood has become more positive. Now, you hear a lot of kids telling each other at these events, ‘You’re missing out if you’re not here!’ And that’s really wonderful to see.”
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