Deana DeSiena is Bradford Sports United’s inaugural recreation director. With a two-year timeline on city and county budgets, DeSiena outlined her vision for the league.
On Jan. 6, DeSiena was introduced as the new recreation director at a Starke City Commission meeting. After presenting at city and county town hall meetings and networking in her first two weeks on the job, she is now building the league from the ground up.
DeSiena recently received her master’s in sports management at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania where she worked in university and recreational sports. She also played four years of Division I field hockey while managing events for the athletic department.
Bradford Sports United was established in 2025 to formally organize recreational sports across the county. The league holds six fields and sign-ups for baseball and softball opened earlier this month.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Perez: How does your background in sports management from Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania help you in this role?
DeSiena: A lot of the stuff that I did in sport management was event managing and how to work with recreational and university sports. So, on the university side, I have that background of the structure and how sports are supposed to work through their seasons. On the recreation side, we had a ton of classes on how to run rec programs and intramural programs. So, they kind of work hand in hand because kids need to be a certain age to play certain sports in certain seasons. They kind of work together.
Perez: What changes do you have in store for Bradford Sports United, and how do you define success?
DeSiena: My plan for Bradford Sports United is to make them completely self-sustainable. Right now, we’re on a city and county budget, and they kind of gave us two years and said, ‘Once that’s it, once that money is done, like if y’all aren’t self-sustainable, it’s kind of done.’
My goal is to make Bradford Sports United completely self-sustainable through the softball, baseball, basketball, soccer and flag football programs that we’ll be hosting. [The] concession stand booming when it needs to. When we have slow days, where can we pick up some extra funds? So if all of my recreation teams are out that weekend, for softball and baseball, I can bring in a travel ball team or a travel ball organization to then still gain money for the program while my other teams are still having fun and playing at other places. Just being able to generate revenue even when the rec sports are elsewhere.
Perez: Considering national issues that are affecting recreational sports, like cost and accessibility, volunteer and equipment shortages, what do you think are potentially the biggest issues that you might face here in Bradford? How do you plan on addressing them?
DeSiena: Definitely parents not being able to afford equipment and then also not being able to afford registration. [A program] actually opened yesterday, it’s called Every Kid Sports Pass. It’s an organization and they have outside donors. I think Dick’s sponsors them and some of the universities and a bunch of sports organizations. They [Parents] sign their kids up through that EKSP and then it gives them a code. They put the code in our system when they sign up for registration and it’s free. The parents then don't have to pay anything, but us as an organization still gets the money because then EKSP actually pays us.
They can use that [pass] for the whole year. And then they have a turnover time. They can use it for softball and baseball this season, and when flag football and soccer come, they can use it for that. They can use it for all the sports that they’re playing as long as they’re recreation, the kids are between the ages of 4 and 18, and if they’re on SNAP, WIC or Medicaid, anything like that.
Registration is covered for equipment. For softball and baseball equipment wise, we should be good. There’s already people on our board that’s like, ‘I’d be happy to sponsor a family and get them the stuff that they need for this season.’ For this season, everyone should be covered with full equipment and full registration fees.
Perez: You just graduated college and you’re still so young, where do you draw inspiration from to keep on going and dive headfirst into a role like this?
DeSiena: Honestly, I’ve always been a go-getter. I’ve worked since I was probably like 13 or 14. It’s kind of like if you want something, go get it because no one’s going to hand it to you. That’s kind of the mindset that I have with this role. Obviously, the people on my board have a ton of connections, but if I’m not going out and taking the time to do stuff, then none of this is going to work because we’re all on a two-year span.
If any of them are in two years, like, ‘Hey, I don’t want to do it anymore,’ because they’ve got lives, they have full-time jobs outside of this board. They could leave. But if I’m still here, I still need to put the work in, and again, no one’s going to hand it to me on a silver platter, so I got to do it myself.
Perez: Why Bradford, what drew you here? What do you want the community in general to know about you?
DeSiena: Honestly, I knew nothing about Bradford when I got here. My father-in-law is a pastor, and the job that I was at before this, it wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t what I wanted to do. So they prayed over me all the time, my husband prayed over me. My parents at home were always praying. When I actually got here for the first interview, they were like, ‘Ok everyone, bow your heads. We’re going to pray,’ and I kind of opened an eye, and I was like, ‘I think this is exactly where I need to be.’ I had an interview a couple weeks ago and me and the president on my board, Mr. Danny Riddick, we both shared how God has had his hand over this whole thing and that’s really why I’m here. It’s kind of like, God really did have his hand on the whole thing. We truly believe that.
Perez: After the two-year run, where do you hope this program is?
DeSiena: I would love for this program to be completely self-sustainable. There’s a field across the street and it’s like 13 acres. Maybe not in two years, but in like five, seven or something. I would love to buy across the street and put a parking lot in and add more fields because, as of right now, we have Edwards Road, Thomas Street and Wainwright Park. Wainwright is more of a park, Thomas Street is just one field and we have a tackle football team that plays on it right now. If we could buy that over there, I would love this to be baseball on this side of the road and over there to be that softball or flag football and soccer because we’d get a lot of attraction. People already want to come because we have six fields here, but then to have that across the street, I think that would just be booming. I have a lot of visions, I just need the funds and support, honestly, to do it. But the people in the community they're very much on board with everywhere that we're going with the program.