By Kathy DeMott
The Dome Sports Center is a 30-acre campus in Schoolcraft with indoor and outdoor athletic facilities and fields, able to provide everything a training athlete needs on one campus. The site on US-131 is also the home of Next Level Performance, which provides training for sports – and life.
That was Josh Baird’s vision when he and his wife in 2016 purchased the former Year Round Golf site, an inflatable dome with indoor-outdoor driving range and golf simulators.
At the facility, coaches build relationships with their clients and help identify and develop their potential. One of the goals is to teach how to apply the life lessons learned through playing sports to the rest of their lives. Their custom plans provide the tools to achieve goals while building confidence and endurance. “We are not just developing athletes, we are developing leaders,” Baird said.
The heritage of the Dome is helping people improve their golf game with lessons, indoor and outdoor driving ranges and golf simulators. The Golf Development Center is designed to help golfers focus on different skills. The short course has five holes to help new golfers learn the game before venturing onto a larger course. There is a putting green, a practice bunker and targets. A new natural grass tee box is in progress as well. The Dome also has golf lessons available from Golf Pro’s Sharon King and Abby Pearson.
Baird’s vision is a multi-purpose, multi-functional, and multi-sports training center that supports athletes participating in fitness, weights, baseball, softball, football, soccer, and volleyball. There are nine new indoor batting cages, three outdoor grass volleyball courts and a soccer field.
Part of that vision is the Miracle Field baseball diamond equipped with special surfaces to accommodate athletes with disabilities. It’s slated to open this summer. The generous support of the community helped make this a reality for many families.
“We are creating a community around health and wellness. We want a campus that will provide everything an athlete needs, including rehabilitation,” Baird said.
The Dome purchased the adjacent Sir Home Improvements building and converted that space into suites with a goal of offering different facets of health care. One of the tenants already in this building is Armor Physical Therapy, which specializes in outpatient orthopedics and sports rehabilitation. This location is led by Vicksburg native Scott Millers, a physical therapist and group director for Armor Physical Therapy, with seven locations in the southwest Michigan area.
The Dome in Schoolcraft provides options for athletes and families looking to live a healthy lifestyle, share an outing, or train to be better athletes and leaders. More information is available at http://www.domesportscenter.com.