In this town, if we waited for consistent blue skies and warm breezes before we pulled on our workout gear, we’d all be in trouble.
Maybe that’s why, even though it’s technically spring, entire softball diamonds, hockey rinks, soccer fields and golf courses still are taking cover under enormous bubbles, the vaulted roofs of field houses and the wide open plains of former factories.
“I think you can take any sport and take it indoors in Chicago and it’s going to succeed,” says Brad O’Brien, co-owner of North Beach Chicago, an indoor beach volleyball bar. “What else are you going to do? Hibernate?”
Just in case hibernation is giving you a last shot of cabin fever, we’ve scouted out some spots where you can sweat it off and get ready for summer without contracting end-of-winter frostbite.
WAVE GOODBYE TO WINTER: Travel to the far shores of Bolingbrook for a dip in the indoor ocean. The snow-splattered cinder block and fiberglass exterior from the international park district school of architecture may not inspire sunny South Sea reveries. But inside the Aquatic Center at 180 S. Canterbury Lane (708-759-2837), suddenly it’s summer. Or at least a pool with waves. Not the mild ripples and splashes hundreds of frenzied doggie-paddlers create. We’re talking deep dips and 3-foot-high peaks that roll out of the 10-foot-6-inch-deep end, undulate across the 136-foot-long pool and unfurl into the return drains on the concrete beach.
According to mechanical maintenance engineer Mark O’Donnell, the four red compressors snorting behind the diving boards alternate pumping air into a series of hidden reservoirs. The air pressure forces an extra charge of water out into the pool, creating the perfectly rhythmic swells of machine-made, salt-free waves.
The water churns, the children scream and the surface bobs with yellow inner-tubes and flailing limbs, the meek clinging to the side rails like refugees, the daring heading for the depths. After 15 minutes, the waves take a 30-minute break. Some bathers settle for conventional swimming. The rest kick toward the humid shore and the comforts of plastic chaises, beach umbrellas to shade out the haloid glare and the sustenance of the snack bar.
Parents, glassed into the observation deck, and pizza-packed revelers in the birthday party room survey the scene from on high. “Every time, the waves get higher and higher,” says Katelyn Michalik, 9, of Westmont, sharing a cardboard tray of nachos and a stockpile of Butterfingers with her bikini-clad swim mates. “You can body surf. It’s more like a beach (than a pool).”
Ride the waves from 6 to 8 p.m. weekdays for $2. On weekends, the pool is open from noon to 5 p.m. Non-residents pay $4 per child and $5 per adult. Residents get $1 off weekend rates. Diving, aquarobics, synchronized swimming, kayak and scuba lessons also available.
ROLL, ROLL, ROLL: Sure, you can bike, skate and skateboard city streets all winter long. You can also come home frozen stiff, scraped raw and trailing an arrest record. Which might be why SCRAP, the Skateboards, Cycles, Rollerblades Action Park, inside the Poplar Creek Sports Centre at 2350 Hassell Rd. in Hoffman Estates (708-884-0945), is dizzy with young men in baggy shorts and battered helmets flying through the air at alarming speeds and daring angles, most of them still smiling.
SCRAP looks like a small city of ramps, banks and jumps. Guys on skateboards do lazy fakies, rocking back and forth along a “half-pipe” (half-circle), contemplating the next big stunt. Daredevils on 20-inch “freestyle” bikes careen down one wall, up a ramp, flip, crash and slide. Skaters gleefully throw themselves at the plywood twists and turns. “On the street, you can get more speed, here you can do better tricks,” says Mike Benjamin, 18, of Bartlett, wearing elbow pads, wrist pads, knee pads and skates. “Getting air makes you feel like you’re flying.”
According to manager Art Abasolo, 27, SCRAP offers rolling youth (“we have a minority of girls, like, five”) safety from the icy patches and heavy traffic they tangle with outside. Not to mention that these sports are illegal on the streets of many suburbs. “We keep kids safe and within one area,” says Abasolo.
Four hour “sessions” run $5. Open 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 to 6 p.m. and 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. Saturdays, and noon to 4 p.m. and 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. Sundays. Those under 18 must sign a risk waiver.
IN THE SWING: You can stroll the greens of the world’s finest golf courses without venturing farther than Naperville. Just sign up at the Indoor Golf Club of Naperville, 1665 W. Quincy Ave., Suite 163 (708-778-1818).
Step onto the AstroTurf, set up a real live golf ball on a wooden tee and enter the world of virtual golf. Projected in front of you, on a 10-by-14-foot screen, is a fairway at one of the world’s fine golf courses, say Pebble Beach or St. Andrews. You size up the situation and swing, using a real club, your own club or a rental. Your ball sails through the air a good 18 feet, then slams into the nylon and Kevlar screen of the Par-T-Golf machine with a rather un-golf-like smack.
Nothing happens, at least for a second or two. Then, aided by the divining power of three infrared cameras mounted in the ceiling to track the speed, trajectory, angle and spin of your ball, a white disc pops onto the screen, silently bouncing off into the 2-D distance along the path your ball would have followed, had you been golfing in reality.
A film strip hidden beneath the turf scrolls through an inventory of 1,200 photographs, then flashes the view you would have seen, had you, in actuality, followed on foot. Time for your next stroke.
The game switches occasionally to an AstroTurf pad underfoot where you can putt into a plastic cup. Plastic shag carpeting in varying degrees of shag stands in for sandtraps, rough and fairway.
“It plays like a real game,” swears co-owner and manager Chris Gary, who opened the 11-course club in January. “It gives you the opportunity to swing your clubs all winter long.”
After each stroke, a printer grinds out a score card and an electronic lightboard broadcasts the results for your teammates (up to 10 people can play on a machine).
The golfers clumped around the machines have plenty of suggestions on ways to upgrade the reality factor. How about tapes of birds chirping or water gurgling? Or maybe sun lamps, fans, even a treadmill.
Virtual golf may never induce sunburn or sore legs, but enthusiasts point out that golfing in place is efficient (you can run through 18 holes in less than an hour). Plus it can help improve your stroke, keep you in shape and offers the chance to travel the world at a fraction of the cost.
“It’s a great way to learn the game,” says Susan Zick, of Naperville, who has been practicing indoors once a week since the club opened. “And you don’t lose a lot of balls.”
The club is open 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, 8 a.m. to midnight Fridays, 7 a.m. to midnight Saturdays and 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sundays. An hour of golf runs $24.
Somewhat lower tech but equally comfy indoor golf is available at a number of driving ranges, where the objective is not to simulate a whole game, but to smack bucketfuls of balls into oblivion. At the Golf Dome of Chicago, 509 W. Roosevelt Rd. (312-427-4653), up to 33 golfers can swing in the warmth of a 70-foot-high, 100-yard-long white bubble, hitting balls across a vast artificial veldt toward the receding blue horizon.
According to manager Paul Douglas, patrons hit about 100,000 balls a day. Ron Ropke, a retired Chicago bricklayer, figures he hits 21,000 a week on his rigorous three-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week practice schedule. “I’m a golf nut,” he explains, gratuitously.
“Summer is so short, as soon as you get your game down solid you’ve got to put your clubs back up,” says Emanuel Worley, one of two pros who work at the Dome. “This is the best thing that has come along.”
Open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week. $8 per half hour for all balls you can hit.
SOCCER TO ME: Indoor soccer might not be as exhausting as its outdoor cousin, but it’s just as popular. League games run all day and half the night at Soccer Enterprises, a set of two foul-weather fields that anchor what might be called “Indoor Sports City” in Palatine. Soccer Enterprises, at 545 Consumers Ave. (708-394-9860), butts up against VolleyWorld U.S.A, Orbit Roller Rink and Grand Slam U.S.A.
“If I had four more of these facilities, I could fill them from November to April,” says owner Pete Richardson, who took over the 80,000-square-foot tennis club in 1986 and converted it to a complex of two soccer fields, three volleyball courts and a maze of video and novelty games, salted with snack bars, bar bars and pro shops.
As the midnight matches make clear, indoor fields are in heavy demand. In fact, Richardson owns two other facilities, one in Highland Park, the other in Loves Park, near Rockford.
Climate-controlled soccer, which is played on a synthetic field the size of a regulation hockey rink, requires only half the running. “At my age, indoor soccer makes me feel good,” says Richardson, 51. “I only have to run 60 yards instead of 120. The bones like the warm climate. And it keeps me employed.”
Otherwise the game plays pretty much the same, from the cute jerseys the players wear to the bleachers full of hoarse fans. “I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t be here,” says Pete Ternes, 20, a student at Illinois State University at Normal and a member of The Kickers team. “I guess we’d play in the snow,” says best friend and soccer competitor John DeJulio, 19, who plays for The Soccers.
Soccer Enterprises is open 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. seven days a week. Field rental runs about $80 hour. Eight-week league games cost $620 for a team. Indoor soccer fields also available at The Ultimate Sports Dome in Aurora and Poplar Creek Sports Centre.
Lots of puck: Hockey is an outdoor sport. A winter sport. A sport that’s played on ice, right? So why, in this of all cities, do we need an indoor hockey rink? Ask the guys who sign up for the hockey leagues that meet at the Chicago Park District’s William L. McFetridge Sports Center, 3843 N. California Ave. (312-478-0211). Note first that those are very large guys, and they’re carrying sticks.
Indoor floor hockey eliminates the need for coats, mittens-and skates. “It’s as similar to ice hockey as you can get without the ice,” says Glenn Endicott, assistant general manager at Poplar Creek Sports Centre, 2350 Hassell Rd. in Hoffman Estates (708-884-0919), where 50 teams take turns sliding an orange ball, not a puck, across the ice-free rink. “It gives frustrated hockey players who never learned to skate a chance to play the game,” says Endicott. And who wouldn’t want to accommodate players for teams named Road Kill, Death Squad, Rink Rats and the Terminators?
Open 3 p.m. to midnight weekdays, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekends. League fees for a 10-week season with one playoff game, $550.
ON THE BEACH: Maybe it lacks the cloud-streaked skies and foot-blistering touch of a July afternoon on the lake, but during the arctic season, North Beach Chicago, at 1551 N. Sheffield Ave. (312-266-7842), is the next best thing to beach volleyball. The bar is stocked with the requisite sand (253 tons of it trucked in from the Indiana Dunes), games (two courts that pack in 126 league games a week), beer (a fully loaded and fully packed bar), and enough sweaty pecs, short shorts and howling fans to make believe the game is sandwiched between the lake and the bike path, not the walls of a former foundry.
True beach bums insist that walled-in volleyball can’t compete with the real thing. But it does have certain advantages. The wind doesn’t blow your ball off course. The sun never blinds your serve. The sand is free of broken bottles.
“It’s nice for a place that has a nine-month-long winter,” says Jacqueline Wiewall, 23, sipping a beer courtside after her match. “I’m from Puerto Rico, where we have a 12-month summer.”
The Beach is open 9 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. weekdays, 8 a.m. to 3 a.m. Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. Sundays. Four-member leagues pay $230 for an eight-week session, two-person teams, $160.
At VolleyWorld U.S.A, 545 Consumers Ave. in Palatine, (708-577-7789), a sunny mural of palm trees and courtside patio tables lend an island flavor to the beach game.
HOME RUN HOME: Just because the diamond has been snowed under doesn’t mean you have to find closet space for your glove and bat. Head to The Ultimate Sports Dome, 100 Business Route 30 in Aurora (708-820-8624), for softball under the big bubble. The regulation-size park can keep you and your team trotting around the bases through the chilly months. Leagues meet for fall, winter and spring sessions. Little Leaguers batter up as well.
Or, if you’d rather concentrate on your swing, try Batter Up! at 2100 N. Southport Ave. (312-404-2287). In the batting cages, a life-size videotape of a pitcher throws real balls out of the screen for you to smack. Once you quit trying to figure out how it works, it’s fun.
One 16-pitch round costs $2. Open noon to 9 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, noon to 10 p.m. Fridays and weekends.
