A new location and a new name hope to bring success for two area sports companies.
The Regional Sports Center in Crystal Lake is now the McHenry Athletic Complex, still located at 1310 Ridgefield Road. Davis Speed Center will relocate from its Nimco Road location in Crystal Lake to The MAC starting Monday.
Paul Miceli took over ownership of The MAC a couple months ago after being the manager for more than a year. Since taking over, he has been hard at work upgrading the facility, attracting interest from club sports teams.
Miceli recently installed a wood basketball court and is upgrading the turf indoor soccer fields. The improvements are designed to attract more interest in the center.
“Most sports centers sit empty most of the year,” Miceli said. “We’re generating all this interest from all these different sports.”
The Illinois Magic and the Crystal Lake Youth Model for Basketball programs both will use The MAC facility. Club Fusion volleyball also will use the Crystal Lake facility as a satellite program.
In addition, area youth soccer and lacrosse teams will continue to use the facility. Miceli said the goal is to make people think beyond soccer and lacrosse when they think of the McHenry Athletic Complex.
“In the past, this was soccer, soccer, soccer,” Miceli said. “Anything you try and do with sports, we’re trying to bring it to the building.”
So far those goals have been an easy sell to the community.
“We have a lot more on our plate than we wanted,” Miceli said. “The vision has grown and the need for the facility is coming out of the woodwork. It’s a great problem.”
Dave Davis, owner of Davis Speed Center, said he wasn’t really looking to move but went to look at The MAC to possibly do some camps. That changed when he saw he could nearly double his speed workout space and have access to the turf soccer/lacrosse fields when they weren’t being used.
Davis said the only hesitancy was the location outside of Crystal Lake near McHenry County College. He discovered that it really wasn’t any further from area high schools than his current location.
“[Miceli’s] got tons of space there and my lease is up at the end of the year. At first I wasn’t even considering it because it was too far out,” Davis said. “It’s actually a decent location and tons of teams are coming in there.”
The biggest benefit for Davis is it will make scheduling team workouts easier. It also will allow him to run student and adult programs simultaneously.
“It’s going to allow us to work with a lot more club teams,” Davis said. “The teams are there practicing. Now the teams can practice and the next 30 minutes after practice they can jump over with us.”
• Rob Smith is a sports writer for the Northwest Herald. Write to him at rsmith@shawmedia.com.