Sports center to open in former Lowville Catholic school

LOWVILLE — A local teacher and coach plans to open a youth and adult sports center in the former Catholic school here, with the ultimate goal of building a full-fledged community center in the future.

“There has been a need for a long time,” said Daniel M. Myers, director of Double Play Sports and a special education teacher and varsity baseball coach at Lowville Academy and Central School.

Mr. Myers, who has organized a summer Double Play Baseball Camp for the past seven years, has secured a four-month lease with St. Peter’s Catholic Church to use the gymnasium in the church’s former school on Shady Avenue for sports-related activities, beginning Nov. 14.

“It’s a great space to get us started,” he said.

Lewis County leases most of the building, which was used as a parochial school until its closure in 2007, for office space. Upstate Cerebral Palsy, Utica, also rents one room, while the gymnasium and one room are used by the church for youth programs and other events. However, the building is not used much in the evenings or on weekends.

County elections officials do use the gymnasium as the town of Lowville’s lone polling site, but Mr. Myers’s programming won’t begin until after the Nov. 8 general election.

Registration for activities is slated for 5 to 8 p.m. Nov. 9 and 10, with an open house from 10 a.m. to noon Nov. 12.

Plans are to redo the floor and make other renovations before programming begins, Mr. Myers said.

Offerings will be as follows:

■ Monday — Youth basketball skills practice for grades three to six from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

■ Tuesday — Adult co-ed volleyball from 6 to 9 p.m.

■ Wednesday — Futsal (five per team) soccer for kindergarten through grade three from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.; adult basketball from 6:45 to 9 p.m.

■ Thursday — Baseball and softball training for grades three to six from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. and for grades seven to 12 from 6:45 to 8 p.m.

■ Friday — Dodgeball and pizza night from 7 to 9 p.m. for grades seven to nine on Dec. 9, grades nine to 12 Dec. 16 and grades four and five Dec. 30.

■ Saturday — Youth basketball, with boys’ games from 9 to 11:30 a.m. and girls’ games from noon to 2 p.m.

■ Sunday — Adult co-ed three-on-three soccer from 6:45 to 8:30 p.m.

“Anything we can add and bring to the community, we want to do that,” Mr. Myers said.

He also sees St. Peter’s as a first step toward a grander plan: construction of an 81,000-square-foot community center, including a 200-by-200-foot turf field, somewhere in or near Lowville.

A 52-page business plan developed by Mr. Myers, with assistance from the Small Business Development Center in Watertown, shows a startup cost of about $4 million for such a center, which would open with 13 employees. Revenues would come through participation fees, sponsorship advertising, fitness memberships, tournaments and camps, expos, sale of sporting goods and use by before- and after-school, preschool and special education programs.

Proposed offerings would run the gamut of sporting activities, including archery, roller hockey and golf training.

Double Play Sports is seeking federal 501-C3 tax-exempt status, using grant funding provided by Lowville Academy and Central School’s Youth Advisory Council. That status would allow the organization to apply for more public and private grants, Mr. Myers said.

The group also is hopeful that some community members will support the project through legacy donations of money or even property on which to build, he said.

For more information, visit the Double Play website at www.doubleplaysports.com or contact Mr. Myers at danmyers@doubleplaysportsclinics.com.