Danvers Indoor Sports has been a titan in the North Shore youth sports market for nearly four decades. With participation in rec sports on the rise, DIS has expanded to a new location in Marblehead that will have a focus on children as young as 18 months through the age of seven.
“The community brought us here,” said DIS co-owner Kelly Craigg. “Marblehead has always been known as a community that is highly supportive of investing in their kids… For us it was an easy decision to consider Marblehead.”
DIS Marblehead is located at 40 Tioga Way and opened in May.
Marblehead was selected as a way to bring DIS programming to a community that has had to go out of its way to get to the main facility.
“We know [Route] 114 can be tough during the day,” said Carrie Berger, director of business development for Danvers Indoor Sports. “It was like, let’s try bringing our quality programs to Marblehead.”
At approximately 2,500 square feet, the Marblehead location is quite a bit smaller than the main 160,000 square foot facility in Danvers, but it is the perfect size to help young kids develop valuable skills through sports.
Outside of the main field, Danvers Indoor Sports Marblehead has a birthday party function room, an art classroom as well as rooms with sports, ocean and space themes.
The two main programs hosted at the Marblehead location are “Lil’ Kickers,” a national franchise focused on child development through soccer, and “DIScover” which has multisport, gymnastics and fitness activities.
“We’re working with parents and making sure they feel comfortable and confident with bringing their kid to one of the first programs that they’re introduced to,” said Lil’ Kickers coordinator Erin Madden. “When the opportunity arose to help out in Marblehead, I jumped at it because it’s a great location. It’s a great community over here. It’s just a chance to help out families that can’t necessarily get all the way over to Danvers because it’s a trek.”
Within the DIScover programming is “Athletic Artist” which runs as a partnership between the facility and The Power of Speech, a play-based occupational therapy center located in the same building. Led by a certified occupational therapist, the program promotes the development of motor and social skills in children aged two through five.
“Our goal is to come in here and collaborate,” said Beger. “How can we work with other small businesses in this community to provide quality programming to families in this area? Yes, we’re in Marblehead, but we’re looking to draw from Marblehead, Swampscott, Lynn, Salem, Nahant. Those are really our top five that we want to draw from.”
With the focus of the new facility squarely targeted at young families, the staff at DIS Marblehead hope to help children from across the North Shore develop physical and emotional skills at a young age to ready them for the world ahead.
“We have parents that understand the importance of their kid’s motor skills as well as social development,” said Craigg. “That’s why we want to branch out and understand that evolution. We’re working with our younger toddler programs on a smaller scale than what we’re doing in Danvers and reaching out into the communities that we think will actually take great advantage of what we do.”
