George Ellis, Director of Basketball and Court Sports at the National Sports center, said he is excited to introduce this new feature to the community. “Makes me feel good to know that people appreciate the work that we put in and the investment that we’ve made, and hopefully we can continue to make more smiles happen for the city of Blaine for having a nice basketball facility that the community can take advantage of,” he said.
“You know, it’s going to be a lot of youth associations, high schools, club volleyball groups, we’ll have some of our own programming that we’ve put in the space as well,” Ellis said.
This new space is a test for the National Sports Center, and Ellis said the center is looking to expand with more court sport space in the future.
“So the goal is to have 10 to 12 courts on campus, and so for us to really be able to serve part of the mission of the Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission of creating economic impact, and providing places to play. We really would want to expand and get into a larger facility or multiple facilities to be able to do that and bring some out of state sport tourism, players from different countries. I’d like to do a USA Cup for basketball to bring in countries from all over the world, so that’s the ultimate goal.”
The new courts are located inside the sports expo center.
