State Awards | Texas Recreation and Park Society

TRAPS State Awards Information

Every year, TRAPS recognizes excellence across the state of Texas in the categories below. Winners are nominated and then evaluated by a TRAPS Committee dedicated to honoring the best talents and efforts in Parks and Recreation.

Questions? Contact Awards Chair, Travis Cunniff.

2027 Awards Updates and Additions

TRAPS is excited to introduce two new statewide awards recognizing professionals who are making an outstanding contribution to the parks and recreation profession:
• Park Professional of the Year
• Recreation Professional of the Year

These awards recognize professionals who demonstrate exceptional leadership,
professional service, achievement, and commitment to advancing the parks and recreation profession.

For the current awards cycle, any TRAPS member may nominate a deserving parks or recreation professional who meets the qualifications for these statewide awards. In addition, regional award recipients in these categories will automatically advance to the State level this year.

TRAPS is launching the Texas Top Ten, a new annual recognition program celebrating 10 exceptional parks, recreation, and cultural arts initiatives in Texas.

Every day, parks and recreation professionals across Texas are finding better ways to serve their communities.
• A new program.
• A creative solution.
• A project that exceeded expectations.
• A process that saved time, money, or resources.
• An event that brought a community together.

The Texas Top Ten is about shining a spotlight on exceptional initiatives and sharing the impact, innovation, and ideas that can inspire agencies across Texas.

And the nomination process is designed with busy parks and recreation professionals in mind! No lengthy narratives and no complicated applications. Just a few minutes to tell us about your initiative and the results you achieved.

Did your agency
• Launch a program that exceeded expectations?
• Transform a facility?
• Create an event that made a difference?
• Find a better way to deliver services?

Tell us about it. Nominations are OPEN!

Showcase your agency for all of Texas to see. Submit your Texas Top Ten nomination today.

Administration - Management Excellence

This award will recognize innovations in administration, management or supervisory actions that have responded to problems, have improved service to the public or have increased employee morale, staff development or communication between or among the public, boards, council, staff, etc.

Arts & Humanities

The Texas Arts and Humanities Programming Achievement Award is a qualifying award for nomination for the Southwest Region Arts and Humanities Award. This award honors those departments with outstanding Arts and Humanities programs. (A project or program that promotes cultural art for example: theatre, culinary, reading painting, sculpting, drawing, quilting, etc.)

Dan Whitworth Fellow

This is the highest award the Society can bestow. This recipient of this honor has been a member of TRAPS and has given outstanding service to the parks and recreation field for a minimum of ten (10) years, in addition to contributing to the promotion and advancement of the Texas Recreation and Park Society.

Educator Outstanding Performance

A candidate who conducted research which contributed new knowledge to the field and actively disseminated this information to parks and recreation practitioners through writing or presentations. Also, an educator who does exceptional work or classroom teaching and also does extensive education.

Honorary Life Membership

This award is bestowed upon a person who has distinguished themselves through their service and devotion to advancing the field alongside the Texas Recreation and Park Society.

Individual Voluntary Service

The Individual Volunteer Service Award is dedicated to individuals who expend extensive time and effort to the beautification and maintenance of a park or the facilitation of a recreational program or leisure activity, or the individual donated land, service, equipment or labor to a park, or they actively advocated for parks before a governing body.

Lone Star Recreation Programming Achievement

The Society confers this award for innovative and effective recreation programming to any organization that has offered a new program to one of its client groups.

Maintenance Achievement

This award recognizes creativity or innovation in the development of unique equipment to solve a particular problem; the development or discovery of a material or chemical to solve a problem; or the development and implementation of a system or process to maintain a park, building, pool or piece of equipment more efficiently or effectively.

Voluntary Service Award - Organization/Agency

This award is dedicated to organizations who expend extensive time and effort to the beautificaiton and maintenance of a park or the facilitation of a recreational program or leisure activity, service, equipment or labor to a park, or they actively advocated for parks before a governing body.

Park Design Excellence

This award encourages and displays the cooperation between design professionals and parks and recreation professionals.

Park Development Innovations

This award encourages innovation and acknowledges new ideas in park development by departmental staff.

Planning Excellence

This award recognizes one parks, recreation or leisure service organization planning project which displays a high degree of professional analysis, quality planning principles and organizational or city/county/state wide value.

Promotions and Marketing Excellence

This award honors the most outstanding promotional efforts of park, recreation and leisure agency for the previous year.

Recreation Facility Design Excellence

The Recreation Facility Design Excellence award was established to recognize one recreational facility project each year that displays a high degree of professional design quality and recreation usage.

Texas Gold Medal

The Texas Gold Medal awards are modeled after those of the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA). These awards honor departments for excellence in the field of recreation and park management for the past (3) years.

Young Professional -
Jerry Garrett Memorial

This award recognizes one outstanding young professional in the entire state in the field of Parks and Recreation who is committed to advancing the industry through leadership, work accomplishments and volunteerism.

Thank you to the 2026 Awards Task Force.

Travis Cunniff, Chair, Town of Flower Mound
Katie Easdon, Chair Elect, City of Cleburne
Lindsay Dobson
Chris Escoto, City of Kyle
Halle Hamilton, City of Georgetown
Jeni Lambert, City of Wylie
Sydney Elliott, City of DeSoto
Kathryn Scheel, City of Schertz
Tyler Wiedenfeld, YMCA Metro Dallas
Ryan Smith, City of Bellaire
Kalee Robinson, City of Wichita Falls
Karen (KP) Pinkert, City of Lubbock
Kenneth Yarbrough, City of Port Aransas
Homer Garcia III, City of San Antonio
Julio Montemayor, City of Pearland
Monte Whetstone, City of Grand Prairie
Neelie Kildow, Travis County Parks