New indoor sports center a reality

Five years ago, Naperville mom Maxine Appenbrink was on the phone trying to rustle up an indoor playing field for her high school daughter's brand-new lacrosse team.

Thirty-five phone calls later, she knew two things: What little indoor space existed was booked, unsuitable or far away, and this was a business opportunity waiting to be filled.

Fast forward to 2008. On April 28, Maxine and her husband, Ron, opened Players Indoor Sports Center, a 95,000-square-foot indoor facility with three half-acre playing fields, basketball and volleyball courts, concessions, party and training space.

Located at Quincy Avenue and Fort Hill Road, they're open for football, lacrosse, soccer, basketball, volleyball, adult leagues, high school sports and kids' summer camps.

"All of a sudden I hear from the Naperville Cricket Club," Maxine said. "They need space, too. Plus, we've got a cheerleading group.

"We needed to be all-sport friendly," Maxine said, noting that their larger-than-usual indoor fields accommodate diverse sports.

"Any sport can come in and this is going to work for them. We wanted to be versatile."

Maxine and Ron got their occupancy permit April 28. Maxine immediately sent out e-mails, and that evening Players Indoor Sports Center had 140 athletes on the new fields playing three different sports.

"The fields were great," said Maxine, who manned the slushy machine in the concession area.

That evening, one of the girls from that first Neuqua Valley High School lacrosse team five years ago, now a lacrosse coach at Naperville Central High School, returned to help Maxine with the concessions.

"That was fun," Maxine said. "(The finished facility) is even cooler than I thought it would be."

Five years ago, Maxine didn't know what lacrosse was.

"I thought it was bowling or curling. I had no idea."

What she did know was that her daughter's high school was so oversubscribed with student-athletes that it was hard to get on existing teams. When her daughter and a friend wanted to start a new club sport, Maxine supported it. That first six-week season consisted of 32 girls and four games.

"They learned the game, played the season and had a party at the end," Maxine said. Other area teams were just getting started, too.

"We had no idea what we were doing," Maxine said. "We were thinking the team would practice a couple of days a week."

They located a coach, who dismissed the twice-weekly idea and decreed the team would practice two hours a day, five days a week.

"We, of course, didn't have a field so we had to travel to all the games."

Maxine's daughter now plays lacrosse for Wittenberg University in Ohio. Her son is a diver for Neuqua Valley -- one of the few sports that Players Indoor does not accommodate.

Before the Appenbrinks built the facility they needed to make sure the infant sport of lacrosse would be developed enough in this area to use it. Maxine, with others, started working on what's become Midwest Lacrosse, a league of eight teams.

"You can't imagine how hard that was. I thought (building the Neuqua Valley team) was hard. That was one team!"

With Midwest Lacrosse in place, the Appenbrinks knew they'd at least have a beginning base of athletes who could use the indoor space.

Maxine, who remembers the on-again, off-again nature of sports practice outdoors, now relishes the certainty of indoor fields. She remembers wondering whether to drop off her child at practice.

"Will it rain? It might rain, it might not. Will the field be too wet? Are we holding practice or not?"

She also remembers, five years ago, making call after call, trying to find an indoor field.

"It was unbelievable that in an area like this, there wasn't more space. I thought, we should do this. It's necessary. It will be used."

• Cheryl Stritzel McCarthy is a mother of a Naperville high school lacrosse player. E-mail her at otbfence@hotmail.com

If you go

What: Players Indoor Sports Center, 1740 Quincy Ave., Naperville

When: Open house from 5 to 9 p.m. Wednesday

Details: Exhibition games, food and drink, inflatables for youngsters, live remote radio broadcast, prizes