Colina Del Sol Park & Rec Center

Hung out here while waiting for car to get fixed. It’s ok place but I wouldn’t hang out here for any other reason.

I run here frequently and yes because I’m hood as fu*k lol but seriously it’s not that bad. There are older folks walking the laps around the baseball field and younger kids on the playgrounds. Pretty nice tennis courts and basketball courts. But occasionally you will see some of the younger generation in which they usually keep to themselves.

I still like this park. But at our last visit, myself, hubby and 2 small children, were told by the police who were patrolling the park that we should not be in the park after sundown. They told us that the park has a lot of gang activity, especially at night. And because we are Caucasian we might be targeted. Left me feeling really uncomfortable. Suppose that’s reverse racism. Prior to that I felt safe.

Love this park! A desperately needed open space in this area that is well maintained. Basketball and tennis courts are clean with good nets. Indoor basketball court is Amazing. Parks & Rec, and whomever else do a great job keeping the park clean. Nothing like it used to be. Never been to the pool, but it looks nice, and with swim lanes too.

I grew up coming to this park for Cambodian New Year and playing tennis, but now I rarely go. I have to give this a three star because the violence here is overwhelming. The community used to celebrate Cambodian New Year over here! It used to be so fun and everyone would have a good time. Things have change due to the violence that keeps on happening at New Years. How can kids and family have fun or be safe when there’s fights happening all the time? It just ruins everything. I miss the old Cambodian New Year here. I wish the violence would just stop. There was violence going on today too at New Years, and they had to send everyone home. I doubt there’s going to be New Years over here again. Man, go fight somewhere else lmao. As for the tennis courts, I love it. It’s perfect for tennis if you live close by. Anyways, if you live close by and you want to take them to this park, be sure to keep a close eye on them or take them to another park. You will never know what will happen.

I grew up coming here. Man I missed this place… I came here the other day with the Grands and had a great time. I was very happy to see that this place is still amazing. The crowd is different but still the same. I love this place~!

This place isn’t as bad as it used to be. Now I can actually go and sit under a tree without having a fear of having someone coming up to me and putting a gun to my face.
The community have tried really hard to preserve the park and to make it both safer and also a lot more cleaner for the younger generation. But damn, save some money because these kids got iPads and iPhones, do they even know what playing from afternoon to sundown without touching a device feels like? Probably not.
This park is still a very cool spot to have a picnic or birthday party for little kids. I do still enjoy it and I’m glad to see it still in one piece. Also, I like how the cops just park right there near the playgrounds lol. That’s where I use to fight all the time, ahhh, good ol’ high school fights :)

I wrote a review earlier about Colina. It talked about the good things in Colina that organization like City Heights CDC and other organization are doing in Colina, work done by Americorp and the Rock Church. There are Resident groups Proyecto Casa Saludables and Star Pals that do such great work in the Park. There are National Night Outs Yearly, beautification Project and clean ups, restoration along with Food give aways. even Heatlh Fairs and Holiday Events. Now crime rates are down due to the work of the San Diego Police Department and other Safety Groups.

I damn near grew up at the park playing tennis in the late 90’s. This park and our couch Henry kept us honest growing up. Yes, it’s very rough around the edges. Hell, it’s rough in general. But, it’s still a very big part of my childhood. I was here from sun up to sun down on the weekends and almost ever afternoon in high school. And, I’m still alive.
The tennis courts are still well maintained, as are the golf courses. The only negative experience I’ve ever had (besides being run into the ground drilling by my couch) was someone decided to throw glass beer bottles at us kids and being harassed by two guys. Thank god my couch was there to scare them off.
I have only used the basketball courts once and quickly got ousted by older, more intimidating guys. But, they are also very well maintained.
I remember running around the whole park during Cambodian New Year.
Good times. Rough neighborhood but my friends and I all survived. But, I would definitely still think hard about parking up to leave when the sun starts setting.

I can only review the basketball courts because its the only thing I did. I went there on a weekday afternoon. The basketball nets were new and the courts were clean. Families were having picnics and teenagers were roaming around. Seemed like a nice family atmosphere. Nice to see teens of all races and genders playing basketball together. The park didn’t seem to be ghetto to me. Maybe all the ghetto stuff happens at night and the weekends.

We rode our bikes to this park, and after pushing the bikes up the giant hill on the northwest corner of the park we needed to sit a rest a bit. This is the only reason we didn’t turn immediately around and ride back home.
As we watched our boy play on the graffiti covered play structure, we could clearly hear every lyric of the Snoop Dogg music and every word the DJ was saying from a tailgating group of people ¼ of a mile away. You see, there was a baseball game being played and there were a handful of cars pulled up to the backstop. They had the music/​DJ blaring, the smoky bbq going, the two teams of 20+ dudes each, and it was ghetto fabulous. It was like a scene from a movie. Like it was «Friday» at the park. Hoochie mamas wearing spangled bikini tops and cut-​off shorts with gladiator sandals were pushing strollers and walking their toddlers. Toddlers with corn-​rows, white wife-​beater shirts, baby pants sagging from their diapers and honest to god gold chains hanging from their necks. If the kids were old enough to have teeth, their parents would have installed grills.
One of us stayed with the bikes while the other parent helped our boy on the swings etc… After 20 scary minutes of watching the parade of hoodiness we packed up to leave just as we heard the DJ urging the pitcher to «shoot him in the chest!» WTF!
Good for kids? Depends on what your comfort level is regarding being in the hood

Took my daughter for swim lessons here last summer. It was ok — not bad, not great. I like that they have water polo & swim teams on site — that’s great. The lessons are a good price, but they have large class sizes (10 kids). There are many kid roving the grassy area unsupervised and grabbing at any morsel you pull out of your bag for your own child — I even had some of the kids go into my bag after food, without asking. Same is true for toys. I never knew where the parents of some of these kids were. Also, if you want to let your kid swim after their lesson for a little bit, you need to pay for her to use the pool. Oh, and my wallet & camera were stolen out of my car while we were there for ½ hr. I know, I know, I shouldn’t have left that stuff in the car. But, c’mon… in a ½ hr.??
What finally made me look for another school was that my youngest had just started walking — they expect everyone to wait behind a chain link fence, which was an increasingly difficult task for a new walker, staring at a huge, blue, enticing pool twice a week for ½ hr. After 3 months of twice a week classes, I took my toddler to the pool deck after my oldest’s lessons and we both laid down on the deck on our tummies and splash the water for a few minutes with our hands. One of the swim instructors walked over to me and rather snottily asked, «umm…excuse me, m’am? What exactly ARE you doing?» I thought after them seeing me spend the last 3 months keeping her from walking out onto the pool deck that they’d be understanding of me just letting her splash the water with her hand for a few minutes. Perhaps they wanted me to pay for the pleasure of us splashing their water?