When the doors of sports facilities across Scotland closed during the Covid pandemic, many never recovered.
One venue in Aberdeenshire, however, has gone from strength-to-strength since its community returned.
Since 2020, over £1.2 million worth of major projects have been completed at Inverurie’s Garioch Sports Centre, a registered charity.
And chief operating officer Kevin Bonarius couldn’t be prouder of what has been achieved.
“We’ve kind of turned the Covid struggles into a real positive success story for the centre,” he told The Press and Journal.
Mr Bonarius, 34, has worked his way through the ranks at Garioch Sports Centre, having started out there straight from school, what’s now 17 years ago.
So just how popular has the centre become?
At the time the centre – which opened in 1996 – had about 3,000 weekly users.
Lockdown posed real challenges, with sports centres one of the last types of business to be allowed to reopen.
But where others have struggled to attract visitors back, the Garioch Sports Centre has thrived, with its weekly footfall more than doubling to over 7,000.
Mr Bonarius said: “I was going through Zoom calls on a weekly basis with the board to update them, with everyone thinking ‘will we ever get back to what we were pre-Covid?’.
“But it is amazing to see that we’re now surpassing where we were before it hit.”
£1.2m investment has been money well spent
Here is how the £1.2 million investment – which the centre’s projects development coordinator Alan Still played a key role in securing – has been spent.
- £760k on a new community 3G football pitch
- £249k on an early learning childcare centre
- £177k on a community wellness hub
- £55k on installing solar PVs
- £25k on a strength and conditioning zone
A former semi-professional footballer with Highland League club Inverurie Loco Works, Mr Bonarius’ favourite investment is the community 3G football pitches.
He said: “I know how much demand there is for facilities in the town and how much growth there has been in football in terms of the girl’s and women’s game as well.
“We were struggling to cope with that demand and we had massive waiting lists.”
Built in collaboration with Locos, the pitches have been a huge success, and are used by hundreds of players of all ages every week.
A ‘unique’ setting for parents and children
The near £250,000 spent on the early learning childcare centre was another “big deal”.
An extension enables Garioch Sports Centre to provide 1,140 hours of early learning and childcare in a “highly innovative setting” with “unique” opportunities for children, parents and carers.
In partnership with Strathburn Park Playgroup, it “delivers a quality indoor and outdoor activity-based experience” for children in Inverurie.
“What’s unique about our project was that it’s outside of a school environment and linked to a leisure centre,” Mr Bonarius said.
“The kids, the clubs and the playgroups that are working out of that space are accessing sport and exercise on a daily basis.”
Stars at all levels now train for success at the centre
Although the new strength and conditioning zone was the lowest cost improvement, it was nonetheless one of the most important.
Before its introduction, many local performance athletes had to travel outwith the area – to Aberdeen and the central belt – to access the coaching, equipment and space they needed to compete with other elite athletes.
After partnering with the Inverurie Youth Sports Foundation, local and Aberdeenshire-based athletes are now winning competitions at regional, national, European and world events while training at the sports centre.
“We’re delivering everything you need on the one site now,” Mr Bonarius said.
“When it comes to sport, you can do all your strength conditioning here and you can do all your actual sport training here. We’ve got it covered.”
Garioch Sports Centre is accessible to all
It is not just elite athletes that Garioch Sports Centre caters for, of course, with “participation” the key word.
And the centre’s opening hours have recently been extended to meet increasing demand.
“Come and try it, give it a go and enjoy it,” Mr Bonarius said.
“It doesn’t always have to be high-level sport that you’re participating in, as long as you’re getting active and you’re enjoying it,” he said.
The centre is home to a “really prominent and active seniors group”, with pickleball particularly popular.
And the social aspect is almost as important as the exercise.
A bigger car park is one of the next priorities
A major employer in a growing town, Garioch Sports Centre employs nearly 50 people and has big hopes for the future.
These are new changing rooms to be built near near the 3G football pitches, with planning permission already granted by Aberdeenshire Council.
And there are also plans to expand the busy car park.
The centre is also exploring the option of bringing outdoor tennis back to Inverurie for the first time 20 years, as well as investigating the potential of padel tennis.
‘There’s a real buzz about the place’
“We’re not really a business that sits on our hands and says, ‘we’ve done a project now, we’ll just enjoy it,’ Mr Bonarius told us.
“We’re always looking at the next thing.”
And he thinks the key to Garioch Sports Centre’s success is it being a “community within a community”.
“I think that’s what makes it so successful,” he said.
“Everyone knows everyone. There’s a real buzz about the place.”
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