The Profession of Parks

“Working in the YMCA’s outdoor recreation program, you wear all the hats,” she says. “All staff in guest recreation services were not only certified lifeguards, but we also ran the skating rink and served as snowshoe hiking guides. It was a little bit of everything, which was wonderful. And that’s what’s so cool about outdoor recreation—there are so many things you can do.”

Schmidt held parks and recreation positions in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Mill Valley, California, before moving to Texas when her husband took a job in Austin. In Central Texas, Schmidt worked as aquatics director for Circle C Ranch and was the catalyst behind Circle C Aquatics. Her first role as a parks and recreation director was with Dripping Springs in 2007. Since then, she’s held the director’s role in the Texas cities of Anderson Mill, Bee Cave, Wimberley, and again in Dripping Springs in 2019. 

It was during her initial tenure with Dripping Springs that Schmidt decided to pursue graduate studies to dig into the academic side of her profession and expand her professional network. She says she considered the University of Texas but found herself drawn to TXST because of its smaller size, Hill Country location, and outstanding faculty, including Michal Anne Lord and Stephen Awoniyi.

“The school is a connector,” Schmidt says. “Everybody wants to help everybody succeed, which is really nice. You don’t just feel like a number.”

Awoniyi, associate professor in TXST’s Department of Health and Human Performance, met Schmidt when she entered the graduate program and taught her as a student. He says Schmidt brought an unusual level of professional experience, leadership, collaboration, and dependability to her studies.

When Awoniyi needed a lecturer to teach a semester’s capstone seminar course for undergraduate recreation majors, he had no doubt about whom he would ask first. Schmidt, who had recently graduated, took the job.

“It was just a perfect fit for Kelly, coming from the field,” Awoniyi recalls. “When she generated her syllabus for the class, I was even a bit envious with admiration of the sense of detail she brought to what she was creating. I saw it as a model.”  

Schmidt says her experience at TXST underscored the variety of career paths within parks and recreation. When she worked as a lecturer, many of her students were interested in the field of therapeutic recreation.

“There are so many different paths to choose from in our field—local, regional, and federal government. Parks and recreation also exists in the nonprofit and private sectors as well,” she says. “What surprised me most about my semester as a lecturer were the number of my students who were going into therapeutic rec, which I didn’t have much experience with at the time. Many of them were going into the medical field. That’s a whole different avenue—rehabilitation centers and the like.”

Following graduate school, Schmidt continued to grow her career in Texas and in Washington state at the City of Issaquah and Vashon Island Park District. She also spent time working for the Walton family (owners of Walmart) as their outdoor recreation projects director and as a senior program officer in their philanthropic space in Walmart’s home territory of Bentonville in Northwest Arkansas. 

It would be hard to top Bentonville if Durango hadn’t come calling. In Durango, Schmidt is managing a parks and recreation system that has a wealth of amenities for a town of 19,000—including 17 paved and more than 100 soft surface trails, 36 city parks, more than 1,300 acres of open space, a seasonal ice-skating rink, a recreation and aquatic center, a gymnastics center, and a ski hill.