8/13/2009 6:00:00 AM Sports arena organizers happy with facility's first year
From left, OHS hockey coach Tony Renlund and OCSA Inc. president Jeff Groenier join Tim and Anne Olson, parents of the late Angela Drake, at last October’s Grand Opening of the Oregon Community Sports Arena. Groenier holds a plaque dedicating the Angel Drake Community Room in the facility.
Supporters and users of the Oregon Community Sports Arena are planning to celebrate the ice skating facility's first year in Oregon. And they say it's been a good year for hockey in Oregon.
"It's just been an absolute blessing," Oregon High School hockey coach Tony Renlund said of the ice rink. "There have been a ton of kids involved almost daily at the rink, and it's been an outstanding year."
"It's a huge difference for Oregon," said Jim Torpy, president of Oregon Hockey Inc. "We've nearly doubled the size of our club in one year."
The 42,000-square-foot facility has served local hockey players well and it's also been used by a host of other groups and individuals. Oregon High School's alternative school program, OASIS (Oregon Alternative School and Integrated Studies), was the first group to begin using the building a year ago, when the fledgling program found a home in the Angela Drake Community Room.
The room is also used by Oregon Karate Inc., which left its space in downtown Oregon and moved to the OCSA building on South Perry Parkway earlier this year.
The Oregon Skating School, owned and operated by Jean Calzavara-Uhlmann, has made the OCSA its home as well. "She's had twice as many people as she anticipated," said OCSA Inc. president Jeff Groenier.
He and others say such programs as Learn to Play, Rink Rats and Oregon Youth Hockey have boomed in the course of one year. In OCSA's first year of existence, Oregon Youth Hockey sported four teams; organizers expect to field seven teams in the coming year.
About 60 kids participated in the first year of the Learn to Play program, Groenier said, and organizers expect to have 80 kids this year."
Those 60 kids "got to play hockey for free for a year," Groenier said. Families pay $50 as a security deposit for the use of equipment and the facility, he explained, and the money is returned to them at the end of the program.
Torpy said there's been a big increase in the number of hockey players, as well as the number people taking advantage of open-skate and family-skate opportunities.
When the Oregon Village Board approved the OCSA's plans in March of 2008, it required that the ice rink be open to the general public at least four hours a week.
The sports arena was built on about six acres south of Oregon High School. The land was donated to OCSA Inc. in 2005, when the Village Board recognized the public benefit to having the facility.
The building was appraised last year at roughly $4.2 million and cost approximately $2.5 million to build, according to Groenier.
"We have to stress the amount of kids that are visiting the ice rink daily," he said. "They're bringing in a lot of money to local businesses. When we have tournaments or camps, those businesses are substantially busier. We held four or five tournaments last year and we want to double that this year. When we have a tournament, we bring in anywhere from six to 12 teams of 12 to 15 kids, plus parents and coaches and other relatives."
Groenier said Oregon hockey is hosting a big high school tournament this year that will bring eight teams to Oregon "and for four days there will be constant games. The tournament will bring 500 people to town," he estimated.
Groenier said OCSA Inc. made its first mortgage payment in April. "Our first year was in hopes of breaking even, and we're really close," he said, adding that sign-up for Youth Hockey is taking place later this month, and a good turn out would help the operation's bottom line. "Our final numbers should be done this week. One of the board members is a banker, and we have a couple of volunteer accountants who are going over the numbers to tell us where we made money and where we lost money, so we can change our strategy next year and make more money."
Meanwhile, the facility is getting plenty of year-round use. Activities and groups ranging from figure skaters to a girls camp to Stoughton coach Rick Fleming's three-on-three stick handling camp have kept rink manager Larry Clemens very busy.
"We've had camps from professional hockey players and we had an elite goal tending camp, which had some current pro players and Badger players there, so the rink has had a lot of use - not only in winter but in summer as well," Renlund said.
The Youth Hockey program finished in the black, Torpy happily reported. "That's partially due to the fact that Oregon Hockey Inc. had a large war chest of money that had been created by all the people who had been here in the past," he explained. "At that time, it was only people that were playing at the high school level, and they did lots of fundraisers and donated a lot of money to the rink, which helped that become a reality. And we donated probably $15,000 to start all the initial stuff that the youth program needed in its first year."
"We just want to see the sport grow," Renlund added. "The rink is an opportunity for kids in Oregon to take up a recreational sport and make sure that they have activities. It keeps them out of trouble and gets them out from behind the computer and out of the house for some exercise."
