June 24—A group of children gathered Friday at Lake Sara Beach Park to participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony and try out a new sidewalk obstacle course.
The local artist who painted the pirate-themed obstacle course, which consists of several games, Sara Roepke, said it took her about four days to complete the project, and she was undeterred by the recent heatwave. Roepke lives on Lake Sara and helps a local organization, Lake Sara Forever, with its efforts to revitalize Lake Sara Beach Park.
“It was a fun activity,” said Roepke. “I’ve always enjoyed art and I always like doing creative things like that.”
As a former primary school teacher, Roepke wanted to design an obstacle course that would be both educational and entertaining for children visiting the park, especially those between the ages of 2 and 10. She explained that the brightly colored obstacle course is intended to attract young children, and that there are numbers painted along the obstacle course to guide children through the course and teach them how to count.
“Kids can learn their colors when they’re 1 and 2 years old, so you could do the colors with the little kids. And then counting by tens, that’s an older concept, so that could be for maybe 8, 9, 10 . year olds,” she said. “I wanted to incorporate all those concepts into the obstacle course so the kids could run through it and do all the different games.”
One of the residents who attended the ribbon cutting on Friday, Linda Ross, has known Roepke for years and they both live close to each other on Lake Sara.
“It’s beautiful,” Ross said of the obstacle course. “What kid wouldn’t like to play a few games there?”
In May 2022, Ross helped Roepke paint the bathhouse located right next to the new obstacle course, and she said she knew Roepke was a talented artist since the two went to kindergarten together.
“She was the one who was honest about all her art projects,” Ross said of Roepke.
Ross attended the ribbon cutting with her two goldendoodles and her neighbor Audrey Lissak, 10, who was also impressed with the obstacle course.
“It’s kind of fun,” Lissak said. “I like it.”
The obstacle course is the newest addition to Lake Sara Beach Park and it appears that Lake Sara Forever’s efforts over the past few years to bring the park back to life are starting to work. Tom Ryan, administrator of the Lake Sara Forever Fund and the resident leading the project at Lake Sara, said he has recently seen a significant increase in the number of people visiting the beach.
“Our goal was to have fun, fitness and peace for everyone and most importantly memories,” he said. “We’ve achieved that for all ages with all the different games we have.”
Lake Sara Forever completed the second phase of the Lake Sara Beach Park project in the fall of 2023. This phase of the project included the addition of new exercise equipment, a fitness challenge course, a half-mile walking trail, four pickle ball courts and a volleyball court.
“This is just another addition to everything we have available for kids,” Ryan said. “We are further than where we thought we were at this point.”
Lake Sara Forever is still finalizing future plans for the park, but Ryan said the group should have a completed master plan for the project’s third phase by the end of this summer. Possible plans currently include adding a third playground to the park with a slide that would be converted into a lighthouse.
“The theme of that third playground would be a lighthouse-based slide down the slope with an ocean pier coming out and zip lines because of the slope there,” Ryan said.
According to Ryan, other possible future additions to the park include giant chess and checkers sets, all-access parking and a multi-story observation tower.
“The one thing I learned when we moved from Michigan to Illinois is the high points and the overlooks are highway overpasses. That’s as high as you can get,” he said.
Additionally, one of the underlying goals of the Lake Sara Beach Park project is to make the area more ADA compliant to ensure that all residents can enjoy whatever is added there.
“Our sidewalks are all ADA compliant,” Ryan said. “We tried to make everything accessible.”
Nick Taylor can be reached at nick.taylor@effinghamdailynews.com.
