HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — If you couldn’t tell by Super Bowl 57, sports will rally us together no matter the team! Huntsville has become a hot spot for sports championship games by attracting fans from near and far.
Here’s the kind of growth we’ll see in 2023.
“We always say sports build community. We love sports ‘cause it brings our citizens together, but not only does it do that but it brings tremendous economic impact to the city of Huntsville,” said Huntsville Sports Commission, Executive Director, Mark Russell.
The commission revealed in its annual report, $31 million dollars in economic impact in Huntsville for 16 different championship events with nine different sports.
“If you think about it when people come to our towns, what do they do? They stay at our hotels. They eat at our restaurants. That brings a lot of tax money into the town and that’s what we use to build these facilities,” said Russell.
City of Huntsville Manager John Hamilton who oversees those facilities says the city isn’t limited to the field or the court. “There’s a skateboard facility that is designed and will be able to host some very significant events and skateboarding is now an Olympic sport. And so when you see something like the NCAA bring in a sport or the Olympics bring in a sport, there's automatically going to begin growing at the youth level, the teenage level, and on up into adults.”
Don’t forget about soccer either. John Hunt Park’s Championship Fields will double in size from two natural grass fields, with two more artificial turf fields to accommodate lacrosse teams by the second half of 2023.
“Here in 2023, we intend to add Disc Golf into John Hunt Park. They're co-located with the cross-country course. So that certainly will be a tournament-quality Disc Golf course. So we'd see that come in, and then of course in ‘23 Joe Davis stadium,” added Hamilton.
From the field to the sand at the Volleyball Complex, and to the courts at the Alabama A & M University Event Center, sports are at every corner in Huntsville.
However, don’t forget the ice. “You know what comes in 2025, ‘24 and ‘25, is an expansion of the Ice Plex to get a third sheet of ice because the demand for hockey figure skating and curling, believe it or not, curling has really, really grown and we need another sheet of ice in order to accommodate that we really could. We could stand to have that third sheet of ice right now but again. We've got to make sure that we're proving with the money that we can actually execute those things,” said Hamilton.
“We have two pieces of ice now, two rinks, going to add one more rink and then one rink that's dedicated to curling. We're getting to be a great site for curling. We've got a great local community. We're bidding on U.S. big events and we think we'll start winning those,” added Russell.
But in order to make this an event, the fans have to be there.
“What we’re trying to do is encourage our citizens to come out to these great events. Many of our events are free and we want to have big crowds and that will help us recruit more tournaments if we show up and support these events.”