Teen Night/Late Night

Only at CPRD
By CPRD Late Night Supervisor Nancy Reid (12 years and counting)
Late Night (now also commonly referred to as ‘Teen Night’) began more than 10 years ago as the brain child of CPRD Activities Director Greg Smith. With a vision well beyond his own family Greg could see a growing need for someplace for the youth of the area to be able to go and ‘hang-out’ without the pressure and presence of alcohol and drugs. Word of mouth networking through friends, co-workers, church members, and interested community members the concept of what we now know as Late Night was born.

Although the program has gone through various names, supervisors and stages, it has never lost sight or value of Greg’s vision for a safe-haven for Colstrip area youth.
CPRD facilities including the basketball court, a dj system, snack booths, racquetball/walleyball room, kitchen, billiard tables, ping-pong table, X-boxes (4), 4 televisions, dart board, foosball, air hockey, wobble boards, roundboards, Simon2 as well as a plethora of card and board games are all available to the attendees each and every weekend.

Middle School students have the ‘run and fun’ of the building from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and the High School students come in at 9:30 to midnight.
In our small community of approximately 2,300 we see between five and six thousand kids come through our doors in a years time. Granted, most of them are ‘repeats’ but still warrant counting as program usage.
We also have special events that we can count on to draw as many as several hundred students out in one night.

Our biggest event of the year has grown to be our “New Year’s Eve” party, closely followed by the School’s Out Bash and the Back to School Bash. We also host a very successful Super Bowl Party which is the ONLY event of the year we combine age groups.
Beginning with our School’s Out Bash (usually the weekend after school is out) through our Back to School Bash we get a tremendous amount of assistance from the CPRD’s Pool Director Jane Pierce and her staff who keep the pool open each Friday night all summer long, exclusively for Teen Night and Late Night attendees.

Our ‘favorite’ event, at least from the side of the employees is the Haunted House. It takes two full days to set up (not without stress) and it is always our pleasure. We receive many compliments and kudos in the weeks that follow – but for the most part I think the employees enjoy the ‘rush’ of scaring the wits out of people for two hours. It is by far, the most exhausting thing we do – but the most fun as well.

We have a company wide CPRD Behavior Policy which addresses the few minimal problems we may incur whether at our program or at any of CPRD’s other parks and many functions.
Teen Night/Late Night staff is currently made up of hand-selected CHS students from a pool of applicants and all new hires willingly sign a release stating if they receive an MIP (Minor in Possession), DUI, PODD or any other infraction of the law (with the exception of a minor speeding ticket) they will be immediately terminated.