OPC Easter Egg Hunt Moves to a New Day This Year

By Carson McKinney
Hottytoddy.com intern
cqmckinn@go.olemiss.edu

Easter Egg hunt at FNC Park in 2017. Photo by John Davis

Though the date has changed, organizers of this year’s Oxford Park Commission’s Easter egg hunt hope to exceed previous years’ expectations.

On Friday, April 19, OPC’s annual Easter egg hunt will be held at 5:30 p.m. at FNC Park. According to OPC Events Manager Emily Keiser, there will be four separate age divisions, ages 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 and 7-10, competing to grab the most candy hidden inside thousands of plastic eggs.

“The first thing everyone says it ‘It lasts 10 seconds,’” Keiser said. “We ordered more eggs than last year to try to make it last two seconds longer. We ordered 9,000 last year and 11,000 this year.”

After the Easter egg hunt is over, children and parents will be able to take pictures with the Easter Bunny and attend a “Vehicle Adventureland,” featuring police cars, fire trucks, logging trucks and more.

“There are different types of cars and trucks coming so that the kids can view them afterward since the hunt is over very quickly,” Keiser said.

The Easter egg hunt was originally scheduled for Saturday, April 20, but a baseball and a softball game were scheduled on Saturday too, raising concerns about parking space.

“We wouldn’t have enough parking for the event, so we decided to move it to Friday,” Keiser said. “We did it after our work hours at 5:30 because people do still work on that Friday.”

OPC Executive Director Seth Gaines says while some registration fees and some money from other programs and sports leagues’ funds go into the overall, annually approved OPC budget, special events like the Easter egg hunt are not fully funded through this budget.

“The Easter egg hunt is funded out of the OPC account that is managed by me and approved by the board,” Gaines said.

Keiser says volunteers from Community Church Oxford and Lafayette County RSVP also help keep the event free and open to the public.