GO Indoor

SIZE DOES MATTER!! All About Playing Fields T he controversy over indoor field sizes, shapes, and enclosures rages as a new generation of mega-indoor facilities arrives. Innovative indoor soccer facilities are popping up across the country creating a variety of adaptations of the traditional indoor boarded game. There are boarded indoor fields indoors, huge outdoor fields indoors, and boarded indoor-type fields outdoors. Aside from the exciting growth to the game, prospective facility owners must carefully analyze the elements of these new trends. Evolution of the Game The first facilities arose, in part, from the bankruptcies of indoor tennis facilities. Three or four indoor tennis courts made a nice soccer arena with the aid of hockey dasher boards. There was no artificial grass in the beginning. Rather, indoor soccer was played mainly on the rubberized macadam tennis surfaces. I call these "Phase One" facilities. Many operators literally made a fortune on these simple installations. We should not forget our profitable early development. Over the past twenty years one of the major strengths of the indoor soccer business has been the use of dasher boards. What most of us enjoy so much, the game's speed, was actually an accidental benefit that derived from using hockey boards. Their original intent was simply to prevent the ball from bounding all over the place, damaging walls, and hurting people. The boards also added a sense of novelty. Providing an alternative to outdoor sports, the game was particularly popular in colder climates. History tells us that basketball's inventor, James Naismith, was similarly inspired by outdoor soccer and the frigid Northeast to find a winter indoor game. He even used a soccer ball originally to play basketball. On the sunny West Coast there is a very successful version of indoor soccer played with boards without any roof. Players in warmer climates have learned that the fun of the boarded game is not merely a wintertime fill-in. The outdoor walled fields are easy to light at night when play is cooler. Over the past ten years indoor facilities have gone from dozens of "Phase One" makeshift tennis facilities to "Phase Two" when the ball is at the other end of the field. If you take a break indoors while the ball is on the other end, before you know it the ball is back in your direction. Everybody plays until they get tired. Therefore, even the weaker players can get good playing time. Adult players like indoor, too, because of the agreeable field-size, compared to outdoor soccer. Still, because of the game's pace, everybody gets a great aerobic workout. custom-designed facilities with at least two boarded fields and an artificial grass surface. We are now seeing the development of the "Phase Three" mega-facilities with three or more boarded fields. Related more to the sheer size of buildings and resulting capital investment than to the number of fields, Phase Three facilities' use of the new infill rubber turf technologies has added near perfection to indoor play. SECRETS TO THE GAME'S SUCCESS Players, especially kids, have always liked the speed of the indoor boarded game. The kids like it because the game is so fast that frequent subs are needed. There is no time to "pick daisies" on the indoor field, like youngsters often do outdoors The American parent-coach, who probably played baseball instead of soccer as a youth, has supported the indoor arena game enthusiastically. Indeed, I believe they understand the arena indoor game better than many who are soccer players and students of the traditional outdoor game. The typical parent-coach has been surprisingly confident and successful in figuring out strategies of the game, instead of fussing over players' skills. Oversized and Non- Boarded Indoor Fields Unfortunately, many experienced, "professional" outdoor players and coaches regularly have heartburn over traditional boarded indoor fields. They tolerate it, and even played it during the '80s and '90s, but a troubling number continues to oppose boarded indoor soccer philosophically and politically. Some professional coaches singularly advocate for board-less soccer in an effort to maintain an "outdoor" environment. Therefore, you often hear sarcastic references to boarded soccer as "pin-ball" or "ping-pong" that creates lazy habits in the outdoor player. Their outdoor practice drills call for small- sided games and more touches on the ball, but the criticism over indoor soccer persists. These individuals' motives are counterproductive to the outdoor game and disastrous for the indoor game. Indoor soccer is a game unto itself – not just soccer played indoors. Indoor soccer uses different equipment, rules, and tactics than the outdoor game. For better or worse, "European" indoor soccer, which eliminates the dasher boards, has developed slowly in recent years. Thus, we witness "soccer gym- ball" very much in keeping with European towns that, unlike in America, did not enjoy the deluge of failed wide- bayed tennis facilities needing conversion, the availability of dasher boards due to a popular rise in hockey, or the space for 50,000 square foot plus indoor soccer arenas. A further extension of this phenomenon has been the construction of full-sized outdoor fields housed indoor. These fields can be over 70,000 square feet and bigger than three indoor boarded fields. Many of us in the industry thought that such designs had merely been an aberration, having proven to be bad business investments during the mid- '90s, but the trend towards indoor super fields continues. As previously alluded, these super fields are built largely at the request of the elite, professional soccer coach. Because of indoor soccer's heavy emphasis on games, as opposed to practice drills, professional coaches have had a hard time transferring their lucrative outdoor training fees indoor. The result has been (continued on page 23) GOAL Indoor • August/September 2003 • 11 b y J i m C l i n e

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• History: Speaking with Ron Newman