The 7 DC Indoor Sports Facilities to Visit This Winter
The cold winds are starting to bite a little harder these days, so the athletic types among us have two choices: bring hand warmers and long johns to the field, or check out any of the DC-area's best indoor sporting activities. Here's where to go for option two.
Location: 10011 Good Luck Rd, Glenn Dale, MD
Size: 45k SF
Sports: Soccer, basketball, volleyball; basically everything
This massive indoor facility in suburban Maryland could be the solution for your group of soccer buddies that has nowhere to play when the snow is covering the fields. It also sells food, hosts parties, and has a TV lounge to relax and watch some sports when you’re done playing.
Location: Commonwealth Center, Ashburn, VA
Size: 5k SF
Sport: Skydiving
At some point this winter—it could be as early as December—this one-of-a-kind facility (for our region anyway) will open up. When it does, visitors will be able to spend more than an hour in a simulated freefall, which owners describe as the exact feeling you get from jumping out of a plane. That should be enough to satisfy the adrenaline junkies out there. For the squeamish, it’s safe for kids and those with disabilities.
Location: H Street Country Club, 1335 H St NE
Size: 7k SF
Sports: Mini-golf, bar games
OK, we might be pushing the boundary of what qualifies as “sports” here, but the H Street Country Club has been entertaining the city’s younger crowd for years. It serves Mexican food and drinks while you can enjoy a DC-themed, nine-hole mini-golf course. There’s also Skee-Ball, table shuffleboard and pool. Maybe for exercise you can do laps after each missed five-foot putt. Or do margarita curls.
Location: Kettler Capitals Iceplex, Ballston
Size: 137k SF
Sports: Hockey, figure skating
Since they don’t let people skate on the Verizon Center ice, this is the only place in DC you can say you laced up skates in the same house as Alexander Ovechkin. The Capitals practice here, but there are two NHL-sized rinks and plenty of public skate times. The Iceplex will stay open while the mall next door is gutted and transformed over the next three years.
Location: Commonwealth Center, Ashburn
Size: 102, six-person driving bays
Sport: Golf
There are other driving ranges in the area—even others with heated driving bays and food options—but there is only one TopGolf. With room for 600 players golfing at a time, the three-level, full-service bar and restaurant and golf venue just opened a few months ago and has been packed constantly since. Bisnow recently spent some time there hitting balls with Washington football legends—the ‘Skins practice facility is just down the road—and it’s the most fun you can imagine at a driving range.
Location: Sportrock, 5308 Eisenhower Ave, Alexandria; Earth Treks, 725 Rockville Pike, Rockville
Size: 18k SF of climbing at Sportrock; 38,500 SF of climbing at Earth Treks
Sport: Rock climbing
You think grip is important for golf? A first-timer at one of the two premier DC-area rock climbing facilities, each with walls more than 30 feet high, will be nursing a sore wrist/finger for days. But it’s worth it, because an hour of climbing is fantastic full-body exercise. And there are few levels of satisfaction in indoor sports one can have more than touching the ceiling after scaling a 40-foot-high wall. There’s also reportedly a 45k SF Earth Treks coming to Crystal City in the not-too-distant future.
Location: 1240 Mount Olivet Rd NE
Size: 13k SF
Sport: Bouldering
Speaking of the not-too-distant future, the future of Ivy City includes a combination boulder facility, beer garden and coffee shop, because Millennials. The mind behind the H Street Country Club, Joe Englert, has partnered with developer Langdon Hample to design this facility, which doesn’t have a projected opening date yet. Bouldering is rock climbing without the height and cables. It’s more free-form, but there’s no spotters around. The owners have stipulated: beer AFTER bouldering, not before. Good luck to them in enforcing that.
