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Parks & Environmental Services The Bridge’s field house features multiple hardwood courts that can be partitioned for games and tournaments. (Photo provided)
The Bridge:
Bringing year-round sports tourism to Bridgeport By AMANDA DEMSTER | The Municipal
Recreation is the main focus of any parks system, but Bridgeport, W. Va., is taking things a step farther. The Bridgeport Parks Department recently completed construction on a 156,000-square-foot facility known as The Bridge Sports Complex, which will be entirely city-run. According to Bridgeport Parks and Recreation Director Joe Shuttleworth, The Bridge features a 42,500-square-foot field house; a 19,000-square-foot aquatic center; 40,000 square feet of indoor turf; plus a Clip ‘n Climb with 31 climbing stations, which he described as looking “like something from Nickelodeon.” “The kids are going to flip over it,” he said. A membership-based fitness center offers strength and cardio equipment, rack systems and free weights. “Our members will also have access to many group fitness classes in our two-group fitness classrooms and aquatic center,” Shuttleworth said. “We are also planning many sports performance
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programs … we will offer everything from personal training to sport-specific training and combine-type training.” Ceiling-mounted equipment in the field house features touchscreen technology that controls the ceiling-mounted basketball and volleyball equipment and allows each to be raised or lowered to accommodate different age groups. Six hardwood courts accommodate basketball, volleyball, wrestling, pickleball, futsal, tumbling and any other sport requiring a large, flat surface. Circling the courts is a three-lane, elevated walking and jogging track. The aquatic center features a 25-yard-by-25-meter competitive pool for competitive swimming, water polo, lap swimming and recreational swimming. A smaller, four-lane warm-up pool is designed, as its name suggests, for competitive swimmers to
