Choccolocco Park Blog

They all came to “The Big House” on that special day – October 16, 2016. After more than a decade of planning, Choccolocco Park officially opened as the region’s premier sports and recreation facility.

Park director Billy Thompson said the park’s vision began with “providing something for the kids of the community. It was for our youth sports and parks and recreation,” Thompson said. “We didn’t realize it would blow up into all that it has.”

Council members Steven Waits and Mike Henderson are the two current council members who were serving when the idea for the park was conceived.

Waits said Oxford kids were “traveling all over the country playing travel ball.”

“We thought, ‘Why not Oxford?’” Waits said. “We then began looking at what that might look like here and thinking about the possibility of hosting state championship ballgames there.”

Henderson agreed that having a quality place for the local youth to play was a key factor, but there were potential economic advantages for the city.

“For a while, Oxford was known just as a retail center,” Henderson recalled. “We saw an opportunity to generate more revenue at the same time travel ball was gaining popularity. We thought that if we could do something with sports tourism, get ahead of other cities, and do something a little different that is not a typical sports complex, we might have a shot at attracting some tournaments, with visitors eating at our restaurants and staying at our motels.”

Henderson said the identifier for the park became the addition of a signature-style field. A signature style field refers to a ballpark’s unique combination of dimensions, design elements, and historical or cultural features that make it instantly recognizable and distinct from others.

It was historical and cultural issues that Waits said made the process of developing the park “complicated.”

Native American remains were found buried at the park site in 2010, three years after planning started. Construction came to a halt until a dignified and respectful solution was formed with the city and the current generation of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.

“We sat down with them and talked about what their history meant to them and what Oxford meant to them,” Waits said. “Quite frankly, we didn’t understand. We asked them to help us tell their story. We wanted this to be as special to them as it was to us and our citizens.”

Their story is now told through narrative plaques that detail the history of the land and its original citizens along a walkway around the park’s 30-acre lake.

“It turned out to be spectacular how it all came together,” Waits said.

Waits said during one of those meetings, the discussion began focusing on what to call the park.

“We threw out a couple of names, and you could tell they just didn’t really hit,” Waits said. “And, we wanted them to have a part in naming the park. We didn’t want to call it Oxford Sports Complex. We wanted it to be special.”

Given the proximity of the park to Choccolocco Creek, the idea began forming to adopt that name for the new venue.

“They began discussing it in their own language where the word ‘Choccolocco’ means ‘the big house where people meet,’” Waits recalled. “When they spoke that phrase, ‘the big house where people meet,’ everybody at the table looked at each other and said that is the name – Choccolocco Park.”

In its first year, the park was awarded “Signature Baseball Field of the Year” by the National High School Baseball Coaches. The Oxford venue has most recently been awarded the National Junior College Athletic Association Softball Divisions I and II World Series competitions through 2034.

"Our slogan is 'The Best Play Here,' and today that's true in more ways than one," said Mayor Alton Craft. "Not only do the best play here—they trust us to host their biggest tournaments."

Choccolocco Park has welcomed some of the best athletes from around the world and has hosted local, state, regional, conference, national, and international championships. Over the past ten years, the park's vision and trajectory have expanded, and it has become much more than a baseball and softball venue. The past decade has brought playgrounds, a fitness court, disc golf, kayaking, and recognition as part of the Alabama Birding Trail, with more than 180 species already identified.

“We have an NCAA regulation track, we have four NCAA regulation soccer fields, disc golf around the park, and the kayaking that many do not realize is a part of the park,” Thompson said.

Thompson added that a “thinking outside of the box” philosophy has brought unique events, such as rodeos and the Greenprix student electric-car races, to the park.

The park has also become a holiday destination as it transforms into Oxford’s annual Festival of Lights and Santa’s Village, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

“Being an outdoor facility and open-spaced area, we’re open to any ideas people might have,” Thompson said.

Waits said looking back, many of the park decisions the city council made as a group turned out to be “extremely positive” and have created “an incredible award-winning facility.”

“But the reason it has been so successful is our people who are there greeting our visitors, serving our visitors, and wanting to make it special for them,” Waits said. “They have created a special place.”

“Choccolocco Park has moved beyond my greatest expectations,” Henderson said. “I expected it to be a place for our citizens to play and to be a travel ball destination. With the college, international, and semipro teams and all the tournaments that have come in, it’s a whole new ballgame.”