Editorial of February 22, 2024

Thirteen Decades of Good

There are some pretty frightening things going on around here in Otsego County, namely the slow but constant demise of many dairy farms, the disintegration of the Lake Road around four miles north of the Village of Cooperstown, the infestation of harmful algal blooms in Otsego Lake and neighboring waters, the proposed Stark wind turbine project that ignored the Town of Springfield, threatened home rule and eminent domain challenges by the state, an incipient inability to see the stars because of light pollution, the high price of food, the loss, next week, of Main Street’s Riverwood to Ithaca, and the surprisingly unrealistic all-around scarcity of public chargers for electric vehicles, especially Teslas, those brainy cars that put on such a great closing show for the Winter Carnival.

But there is a bright side. The Clark Sports Center, the Village of Cooperstown’s—and the county’s—most sophisticated, convenient, user-friendly and all-inclusive place to go for good health, welcome fitness and conviviality. Miracles happen here.

The Clark Sports Center began its life in 1891 as the Alfred Corning Clark Gymnasium, tucked into a former hardware store on the corner of Main and Fair streets, the present site of a wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. It had an indoor track, a bowling alley and a gym floor on which activities such as fencing, high jumping, boxing, and weightlifting were exercised. General fitness was encouraged. Membership cost six bucks a year and women were invited to join as well.

After opening up some swimming and diving programs on Otsego Lake, in 1924, the gym was demolished to make room for a new, and larger, gym, funded by Edward Severin Clark This one opened in 1930. It was considerably more developed, with a swimming pool, squash courts, more bowling alleys, a steam bath and longer hours of operation. All of Cooperstown partook of a seemingly endless variety of social and physical activities at the gym—basketball tournaments for children and adults, swim meets, squash battles, aerobics, ballroom dancing—all of them good, fun, and healthy. This gym lasted until 1983, when the Hall of Fame incorporated the building and the Clark Foundation decided to build yet another gym, this one on the outskirts of town on Ambrose Clark’s once very active polo fields. It was to be even larger, state-of-the-art modern and seriously more inclusive, with substantially expanded programs for both adults and children, a considerably larger staff and, again, even longer operational hours.

And this is what we now have, here in the wilds of rural upstate. The renamed Clark Sports Center, a very impressive structure with facilities for people of all persuasions and every nature of needs, from physical therapy to Nautilus exercise, personal training and all number of heavy weights, to rock climbing, squash and pickle ball, golf and kids’ games, swimming instruction and competitions, saunas, bowling, running, yoga and spinning, ping pong and, outside, tennis, soccer, running trails, and a massively tempting ropes course, complete with a zipline. There is also a conference center, many ongoing and innovative programs for seniors, an Adventure Department, an Outward Bound Scholarship Program, which offers students and educators an opportunity to participate in an Outward Bound Wilderness Course, and an Odyssey Program, which offers eighth-graders a canoe trip in the Adirondacks.

Best of all, the gym has a dedicated, hardworking and talented staff that cares about all of us. Thank you.