Before: Murray Park's tangled terrain

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — If you were to take a group of prisoners, mix them in with a governor, a mayor, a wildlife agency, high-ranking parks and recreation officials and dozens of dogs, you might have a backdrop for a scandal.

In Little Rock, Ark., though, that was the mixture that banded together to produce the Sporting Dog Challenge, a qualifying event for the 2001 Great Outdoor Games.

"If ESPN wanted to host a football, baseball or basketball game anywhere in the country, finding venues for those games would be as easy as looking to the nearest arena or stadium," said Brian Day, director of the Little Rock Parks and Recreation. "Events for the Great Outdoor Games — where you have specialized games — call for specialized arenas and a specialized effort." And it was a specialized effort.

	After: The venue awaits the masses

The Sporting Dog Challenge took place along the banks of the Arkansas River in Little Rock's Murray Park, an area used mostly by soccer players, fishermen and bicyclists. For the most part, sections of the park have been overgrown with thick masses of underbrush and driftwood washed there by the Arkansas River.

"When I first saw the area, I really could have never pictured it as the perfect for this event, but that is what it became," said Jerry McKinnis, host of ESPN's "The Fishin' Hole" and executive producer of The Sporting Dog Challenge. "There's an old Ozark saying about making a silk purse from a sow's ear; it's an impossible thing to do. But if ever anyone ever made a silk purse from a pig's ear, these guys did it."

The makeover for the site started about five years ago, when the Arkansas Bass Association, a statewide fishing organization, utilized prison labor to help clean up the park for an upcoming bass tournament.

As the prisoners began their work of cleaning up trash and clearing underbrush, they opened up a small area where a pond had been hidden for years.

"We didn't even know there was a pond in the middle of all the brush," Day said.

The uncovering of the pond, though, would prove to be the biggest key in the success of the Sporting Dogs Challenge and makeover of one of Little Rock's busiest parks.

Five years ago, when the pond was first revealed, the Arkansas Bass Association wanted to convert the pond into a fishing pond for youth. But more than 90 percent of the bank remained overgrown, and engineers assumed the sandy bottom wouldn't hold water.

"There were other projects that needed attention, and the enthusiasm just died," said Doug Swann, president of the Arkansas Bass Association.

That changed when ESPN decided the pond and the surrounding area of Murray Park might make a good site for the Sporting Dog Challenge. Their feelings were justified as Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey and Day got into the act of transforming the site.

A work crew from the Arkansas Dept. of Corrections began peeling back layers and layers of underbrush, hauling off more than 60 dump-truck loads of vines and brush to uncover a shallow body of water, perfect for a retriever trial.

The work took most of a month and it didn't just stop at the pond. Grass had to be sown and fertilized for the agility trial, and a custom dock had to be built for the Big Air competition.

That dock proved to be a challenge for organizers, as well. Funding for the dock was acquired from the city, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Huckabee and the organizers. And all of them helped in getting through the complicated process of acquiring federal permits to build a dock on the Arkansas River.

To receive payment for the dock from officials involved in the process, the entrance to the dock was required to have a concrete walkway to meet federal requirements for handicap accessibility. Contractor after contractor was called, but none would take the job because of the slope of the bank and the size of the job.

To get the concrete laid in time, McKinnis' employees, who normally spend their time involved in television production, spent the final week of preparation building forms and laying concrete.

By the time the Sporting Dogs Challenge was underway, there wasn't a square inch of the area that wasn't in the frame of an ESPN camera. Tents and vendors lined the park, and dogs romped everywhere.

And now that the tents and cameras are gone, a specialized effort from a coalition of agencies and individuals has left something good for the city.

The dock that took so much time will remain for anglers and boaters. And the pond no one knew was there is expected to finally make it to the youth fishing pond. The carefully sown and fertilized grass has become a favorite picnic spot.

"The whole park has been transformed," Swann said. "It took a lot of special people and ideas to make it happen.

"But the real special things are what we gained, not what we gave."