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City says MOU with Nevada Youth Soccer Association has lapsed; municipal sports unit to manage field allocations
Summary
Deputy Director Pat O'Mara told the commission the long-standing memorandum of understanding with the Nevada Youth Soccer Association was not renewed; the city will directly manage field allocations and prioritize youth, municipal and contractual uses under a published priority order.
Pat O’Mara, Deputy Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Director, told the commission that the city’s longstanding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Nevada Youth Soccer Association (NYSA) has expired and will not be renewed in its prior form.
“As we were in the process of re-upping that MOU…what they were proposing is not something we were interested in, and so the MOU has been allowed to lapse and we have taken over the field allocation,” O’Mara said. He said the municipal sports unit will continue to support local tournaments and prioritize community youth access while trying to attract some tournament-related tourism dollars.
O’Mara outlined the city’s field-allocation priorities: first the city’s athletic sports programs, then other City of Las Vegas programs and joint contracts (such as with the school district), then historical users; new uses are prioritized to nonprofit youth organizations, then nonprofit adult organizations, then commercial youth and commercial adult, and finally individual short-term rentals.
He said clubs that had previously received field time through NYSA will now request space directly through the municipal sports unit. “We are trying to ensure that we’re being as fair as we can to the groups that were not technically coming to us for space,” he said.
O’Mara also noted the city has a mutual-use agreement with the school district that allows some sharing of fields, but said school facilities generally cannot solve the current allocation gap because the district’s fields are heavily programmed and used.
The deputy director also gave other recreation updates: a junior lifeguard camp for ages 11–14 and a summer basketball league that filled in five days, with roughly 550 registered participants and a nearly 200-person waiting list. He announced Cassandra Lewis’s upcoming retirement after roughly 32 years with the department.
Why it matters: field allocation affects hundreds of youth teams, local clubs and tournament organizers and may change how local organizations secure practice and tournament time.
Staff did not propose immediate policy changes during the meeting; O’Mara said the department will hold field-allocation meetings to discuss the transition and to apply historical-use considerations where feasible.
