Villa High will be remaking the playground in honor of Kenton Krehbiel

By Derek White

The community of Colby, and surrounding areas will be home to a new inclusive park, that will provide family entertainment for everyone. A coalition of groups worked together for the last 10 months and raised over $500,000 to rebuild the playground area at Villa High.  On March 21, that coalition “broke ground” in an exciting ceremony with nearly a hundred in attendance.  The park will serve in an additional way unlike the other parks in Northwest Kansas, this park will allow children with disabilities to be able to join in on the fun now at Villa High and the Kenton Krehbiel Inclusive Park. 

A coalition had formed between the Kiwanis Club, the City of Colby, Rotary Club, the Thomas County Community Foundation, and a group of parents wishing to advocate for a new inclusive playground. They partnered with Cunningham Recreation, who offers playground features from Game Time, and began to meet to begin the process of bringing this playground to reality for our community. Today, this dream is coming true. We received great support from the citizens of Colby and surrounding area leading to today’s groundbreaking.

The Kiwanis Club of Thomas County/ Colby adopted Villa High Park and playground many years ago as a club project to provide annual maintenance on the playground by painting, making minor repairs, trimming trees, and adding sand to areas around the play structures. Kenton Krehbiel participated in this project for several of those years, and after he passed, Kiwanis decided to honor him by pursuing a complete overhaul of the current playground with new modern play features.

The current inclusive playground was not in the original plan, however, as time passed, they caught wind that there was a large need to have a playground that could accommodate all children, with a focus on those with limited abilities and special needs.  The Colby Community has been lacking in this area for many years.

The wind was from several parents of children with disabilities looking for a location for their children to play and interact with other children.  Kiwanis Club and the City of Colby then went through a concept and design phase, and identified what items would like to see at Villa High Park.  The current equipment at the park is around fifty years old, and in desperate need of replacement. 

Then enters Josh Ryan who became president of Colby’s Rotary Club in July of 2023, and each year the club president gets to decide a community project to do.  Being friends with Drew and Melissa White who have a physically disabled child, he had heard from them many times about their disappointment in there being no inclusive equipment at any of our parks. 

“When it became my year for a project, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  Originally, I was planning on getting a specific piece of equipment to put into a park, possibly Fike Park.  However, after meeting with Colby City Manager Ron Alexander, he had told me that Kiwanis was wanting to replace the old equipment down at Villa High, so he got me into contact with Rick Dickman, the President of Kiwanis, about partnering up to make this park a reality,” said Ryan.

Ryan also is part of Farmers & Merchants Bank, which was looking for new ideas on how to give back to the community.  Their marketing committee came up with the idea to have a food truck set up in our parking lot, and the bank could donate to something local for every plate they sold.  The bank president, Brent Wiedeman, is also in the Rotary Club and knew how much this project meant to Ryan.  Wiedeman then decided the funds would go towards the park project, there was amazing community turn out that day, because several people in the community understand how beneficial this park will be.

"We truly believe by offering a facility such as the Kenton Krehbiel Inclusive Playground at Villa High, that the quality of life for children and families of all ages will be enhanced through outdoor play, not only for local and regional residents, but also those families travelling through northwest Kansas as well,” said Alexander. 

Ryan said, “This park is going to be an amazing asset to our community. I believe the closest park to Colby with similar equipment is Hays, and there are already families from NWK who drive to Hays specifically for their inclusive park. Having this park closer to home for our NWK families is going be great and hopefully be a desired stop for those traveling through on I70.”

For anyone interested in getting involved in either Kiwanis or the Rotary Club you can reach out to their presidents.  For the Rotary Club Ryan said, “for anyone interested in joining Colby’s Rotary Club or would like to learn more about what we do for our area, I’d gladly talk with them or invite them to be my guest at our weekly meetings every Tuesday at the College.”

Or, if you are looking for a way to become involved, have a heart that leads you to help children and improve your community, Rick Dickman would invite you to check out joining Kiwanis, or any of the service clubs in Thomas County. If you are interested in Kiwanis, you may reach out to me, Rick, at 785-443-3600, or join us at one of our weekly meetings. We meet each Thursday, at noon, in the CCC Student Union room 106.