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The Strafford Sports center opened February 13th for four weeks of games.
Just five weeks later, like so many other businesses, the Sports Center is closed until further notice.
The 33,000 square-foot facility has four courts, a kids zone and a full concessions area.
“We may have an eight game period, or an eight week period of time where we run games, then in between a week, then we start over again,” said Assistant Director Courtney Donohue.
The team at the Strafford Sports Center had hoped to fill the building for the start of its next session starting March 30th.
Due to the ongoing health crisis, the complex will now sit empty.
“I would say it’s heart-breaking,” Donohue said. “Coming in here and watching those kids play, it fills your heart, it’s awesome.”
It seems area coaches would agree, like Willard youth coach Branden Maples.
“We played there the first session they had and we will definitely take teams back there,” Maples said. “All the kids were looking forward to it. Especially, with it being so new and something different, they were all looking forward to going out there and playing again.”
Donohue says the venue will be prepared when the time finally does come for the kids to compete again.
“Safety is our number one priority, so we have a company coming in to deep clean our equipment, you know our bleachers, you know everything is all wiped down and clean,” Donohue said.
With that, the Sports Center can get back to filling the purpose it was always meant to serve.
“It has not only generated revenue for our city, but brings so many in from the surrounding area and the camaraderie around basketball is huge,” Donohue said.
These days, we could all use a little more of that.
