Piqua Police bring kickball to Mote Park for middle-schoolers

Piqua police brought kickball to Mote Park on Thursday morning, turning the 635 Gordon Street field into a pickup game for youths entering grades 4 through 8. The free session ran from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., and the city said drinks were provided.

The kickball stop was one piece of Piqua’s annual Police in the Parks series, a summer lineup the city describes as a free community program for youth entering grades 4 through 8. The full 2026 schedule was set for 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. unless otherwise noted, with the calendar rotating through Gaga Ball, Cornhole, Kickball, Pickleball, Wiffle Ball, Soccer and Basketball. That structure kept kickball in a familiar lane: quick to start, easy to join and built more for participation than for anything resembling a formal league.

The city’s own framing tied the games to a broader goal. Police in the Parks is designed to give kids opportunities to take part in recreation alongside Piqua police officers while building positive relationships in the city’s parks. In practice, that makes a simple playground sport like kickball especially useful. A child can walk up, pick a side and be in the action almost immediately, which gives officers repeated, low-pressure contact with the same age group without asking families to commit to a long season or a complicated registration process.

Kickball has been part of the program before. The city listed a 2025 kickball stop for Thursday, Aug. 7, and local coverage that summer placed kickball inside a broader Police in the Parks rotation that also included wiffle ball, basketball and flag football. That reporting also noted officers taking part with children at Pitsenbarger Park, underscoring that the point of the series is as much time with officers as it is play.

This year’s schedule also put kickball into a wider summer circuit that started with Cornhole at Lock 9 Park on June 11 and continued with Pickleball on July 8. By spreading the events across several parks and several weeks, Piqua kept the format light, repeatable and public, with Mote Park serving as a mid-summer stop where the game itself was simple and the off-field goal was even clearer.