By Mark Rosman
Staff Writer
MANALAPAN — Sportika, a comprehensive sports training and youth development center on Woodward Road, will host an open house and welcome members of the public to tour the new facility from noon to 6 p.m. April 1.
The New York Junior Knicks will put on a basketball clinic for children ages 5-8 at 10 a.m. and a special member of the New York Knicks will be on hand to sign autographs.
Manalapan officials will be present for a ribbon cutting ceremony at Sportika at 9 a.m.
The Manalapan Planning Board approved the construction of the 170,000-square-foot facility in April 2015.
Sportika’s first floor includes a regulation size synthetic soccer field (90,000 square feet in total, with a 54-foot-tall ceiling). That field will also be used for lacrosse, flag football, baseball, softball and football, said Jeffrey Jordan, Sportika’s chief executive officer.
The first floor also has three basketball courts, locker rooms, team strategy rooms, a vending area and an arcade.
In addition, there is space on the first floor for three operations that have entered into partnerships with Sportika.
Sportika-Brain Storm is an academic center that will provide tutoring services, homework help and SAT/ACT preparation, Jordan said.
Sportika-GoodWorx is a Youth Mentoring Academy that will offer life skills mentoring through a curriculum that includes workshops and seminars for students in fourth grade through college.
Parabolic, Powered by Sportika, will provide sports performance training and physical therapy, Jordan said.
Those three operations will be open to the public and are not limited to youths who participate in Sportika’s sports academies.
Sportika’s second floor contains four full-size basketball courts which will also be used for volleyball and futsol (Brazilian indoor soccer). There are also team strategy rooms on the second floor.
A 44,000-square-foot outdoor playing/training field will be ready for use in the spring, according to Jordan.
Jordan said Sportika’s mission is “to provide a comprehensive ‘humanistic’ approach to developing young athletes. Sportika is committed to developing not only the physical skill of each young athlete, but also their intellect, emotion, instinct, and intuition. We have an opportunity to change the industry when it comes to youth sports.
“Very few people make it to professional sports. Our goal is to prepare athletes to be well rounded, socially conscious, global thinking citizens, and to not only to get them into college, but to have them thrive, whether they are playing their sport or not,” he said.
Sportika offers academies for youths ages 8 to 17 in basketball, soccer, baseball and softball and its academy teams compete throughout the region.
Sportika will host training, league play, corporate events and birthday parties.
On behalf of ownership, Jordan thanked Avana bank, “which financed our dream and that dream is now becoming reality,” as well as the township of Manalapan, especially the Planning Board and Construction Department for their ongoing support and belief in the project.
He said young people who train and learn at Sportika will be taught the same type of resiliency and grit “as that demonstrated by ownership in overcoming the odds to make this a reality.”
Sportika has been constructed on 12 acres of a 22-acre tract on Woodward Road, just north of Route 33.
A sports training facility is a permitted use in Manalapan’s Special Economic Development zone on Woodward Road, according to testimony that was presented when the Sportika application was before the Planning Board two years ago.
