NEW CASTLE Y Sports Zone offers values-based programs

Two indoor basketball courts will be added to the Sports Zone in January.
By LAURE CIOFFI
VINDICATOR NEW CASTLE BUREAU
NEW CASTLE, Pa. -- Mark Spangler can't say enough about the new New Castle Community Y Sports Zone.
The Ellwood City man regularly travels to indoor soccer arenas in western Pennsylvania with his sons, Sean, 14, and Kevin, 12.
The recently opened indoor soccer field in Neshannock Township, Lawrence County, is now their favorite, he said.
"I like the fact that there is the Y philosophy at work here. The kids aren't here to kill each other. It's nice not to have coaches yelling and I don't hear as much parental screaming," Spangler said.
That's part of the atmosphere New Castle Community Y officials hope to keep at their newly opened facility off Mitchell Road in Neshannock Township.
Sports Zone, an indoor soccer field and fitness center, opened Nov. 3 and has already found moderate success recruiting 61 teams and more than 700 participants in the soccer program alone, said Dan Harris, chief executive officer of the New Castle Community Y.
"This new program is the largest our YMCA has ever had," Harris said. "One of our goals all along has been to help improve the quality of life by providing values-based programs."
Base Y: Programs continue regularly at the Community Y's base on West Washington Street in New Castle, but the landlocked building couldn't accommodate the growth the Y experienced in the last 10 years when membership doubled to 3,200, Harris said.
Extension sites have been established at Union and Mohawk schools and at Deshon Park in New Castle, but Y officials needed a spot where they could grow.
In the spring of 2000, they bought a 34-acre tract off Mitchell Road near the Hess Ice Arena in Neshannock Township and started raising money to build the new facility.
They eventually raised about $2.8 million and pumped most of it into the new Sports Zone, Harris said. About $600,000 is expected to be spent on cosmetic renovation work in the downtown building, he added.
It's all part of a plan to improve after-school programs and to revive the spirit of Camp Rentz, an overnight facility the Y operated on Pa. Route 108 in the 1960s.
Although it won't offer any overnight programs, the new Sport Zone gives the Y enough space to expand its day summer camp program, Harris said.
"What was unique about the downtown Y summer camp program is that we had no outdoor space. Now we do," he said.
What's planned: That space will include outdoor soccer fields and a multipurpose field next to the Sports Zone, said Matt Taylor, Y Sports Center director. Two indoor basketball courts should be ready sometime in January, he added.
The adults and children haven't minded the fact that the building is a work-in-progress, Taylor said.
Yellow tape marks off the cavernous section of the building where the basketball courts will be built and indoor bathrooms are still being worked on.
Despite those inconveniences, the indoor field is rarely empty, he said.
The soft feel of the Astroplay synthetic grass -- a surface that has crushed limestone, rubber granules and a shock pad -- is about the closest thing to real grass there is at an indoor facility, said parent Mark Spangler.