WISH YOU WERE HERE? Sports tournaments score big as tourist draws

›› Coloradans roll their eyes at the mention of Casa Bonita. Casa Bonita owners laugh all the way to the bank. There’s a lesson there.

The mission style, pseudo-Mexican restaurant on the other end of Colfax in Lakewood is a pink-stucco beacon to out-of-towners.

Shoveling yellow-cheese covered-plates and posing for black-and-white snapshots in an Old West backdrop only takes up one evening, a mere drop in the bucket for many of the thousands of families of athletes who come to Aurora for a wide spectrum of tournaments that feed into the lifeblood of the city’s tourism industry.

Baseball, softball, soccer and rugby players of all ages and sexes tromp through Aurora with family in tow for long weekends or even eight-day fast-pitch softball odysseys.

Aurora played host to roughly 50 sporting events in 2012, according to Visit Aurora president Gary Wheat, with the number on the rise as the city seeks to add winter events to its arsenal.

“Sports drives our bus pretty good around here,” Wheat said.

Through word of mouth, Aurora has become such a popular destination for sports tournaments — especially at the youth level — that trying to lure visitors with elaborate Power Point presentations is a thing of the past. Tournaments now come to Aurora with bids, and many have to be turned away. Yes, Aurora. Go ahead. Roll your eyes, Denver and Broomfield. Aurora hotels, restaurants and shops are laughing all the way to the bank.

Why Aurora? Naomi Colwell, director of marketing for the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, explains.

Being close to the middle of the country makes it accessible from both coasts, and Denver International Airport is in the city’s backyard. Colwell says it’s Aurora’s community vibe — minus the congestion and logistical snags of a metropolis — that is a big lure.

But the city’s greatest asset is the 220-acre Aurora Sports Park on the eastern edge of town. With 23 full-sized soccer and multi-use fields, plus three connected softball complexes with four fields each, the Sports Park is its own economic engine. It’s traditional enough to hold favorite sports, but it also adapts to the likes of lacrosse, rugby, ultimate Frisbee and even paintball.

Between April and October, the facility is booked full as six full-time and 10 seasonal employees work to keep it in top shape.

Even after a decade of vigorous use, the Sports Park still sparkles, according to Rose Williams, Aurora’s superintendent of sports.

“Our fields are the best in the metro area, if not the Rocky Mountain region, so people are always wanting to use our facility,” Williams said. “From mid-May to mid-August, we are booked and we often have four or five events competing for the same time frame. We have a big waiting list.”

With such demand, the city can afford to pick the tournaments that draw the most visitors to the area and give the local economy the biggest shot in the arm.

By their nature, girls tournaments tend to draw more people. Parents are compelled to make the trip more so than they are with boys, who often travel with just coaches and a few others, even at a younger age.

The annual Colorado Fireworks softball tournament has called Aurora home for most of its 44 seasons, but when the Sports Park came online, it allowed the tournament for elite 18-under and 16-under girls fast-pitch softball teams to blossom.

Last year, the numbers swelled to just shy of 200 teams with representatives from 43 states, while visitors from Canada, Australia and New Zealand also made the trek to Aurora for the tournaments. The event also draws hundreds of coaches and scouts from myriad college programs with scholarships in hand.

Since acquiring the tournament’s rights a few years ago, Triple Crown Sports has brought national television exposure to the event and enhanced its reputation as one of the country’s best travel tournaments.

The bottom line for the Fireworks tournament last year? Try $10 million according to Wheat, who said Visit Aurora tries to stay on the conservative side with its estimates.

On the flip side, athletes in adult male tournaments tend to conserve money by sharing rooms, but they also tend to spend more on alcohol, food and entertainment. It all adds up to a winning tourism equation for Aurora.

As the parent of a daughter on a traveling sports team, Colwell intimately knows what thousands of families that come to Aurora are going through. She faces an eight-hour drive in late February with a car full of teenaged girls to spend several days in miserably cold Omaha, Neb., for a volleyball tournament. She would much rather go to a place like Aurora. She gets it that not everybody in the car is thrilled about the trip, so when families get here, it’s important to show everyone a good time. Aurora does that.

When families build a vacation around the competition, Colwell and others are pointing out the best of Aurora and the Rocky Mountain region.

Those who can’t or don’t want to venture too far have plenty of options, such as viewing wildlife at the Plains Conservation Center or the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, riding horses at nearby stables, visiting the beach at the Aurora Reservoir or appeasing the teenagers with a trip to Southlands.

And it’s not only Midwesterners or New Englanders filling Aurora hotel rooms for sports events.

“Willkommen bei Aurora!,” “Välkommen till Aurora!,” “Bine Aui Venit la Aurora!” All phrases — in German, Swedish and Romanian, respectively that translate to “Welcome to Aurora!” have been heard more frequently since the city arrived on the international sports scene, most specifically the world of powerlifting.

Veteran world champion powerlifter Dan Gaudreau and his wife, Jennifer, owners of the Rocky Mountain Lifting Club, have done the grunt work in opening a new door to Aurora tourism that spans the entire globe.

Bulging competitors, their families and flag-waving supporters from 20 countries were on hand for the International Powerlifting Federation’s World Masters Bench Press Championships in 2012. The event netted Aurora hotels and restaurants about $300,000. In November 2014, an estimated 2,000 lifters will spend 10 days competing in the ballroom at Aurora’s Red Lion Inn during the IPF World Men’s and Women’s Powerlifting Championships.

International visitors have been much more likely to stay in Aurora. They rode the mechanical bull at The Stampede to indulge in the Old West perception of the area, sipped on international-caliber microbrews at the Dry Dock Brewing Co. and poured money into stores.

As much as facilities and location play into the equation, it’s Aurora’s people that also make it an attractive sports destination in Wheat’s estimation.

“No matter where I’ve been in my career, tourism starts from the inside out,” he said. “It takes people like the Dans and Jennifers and the folks at the Sports Park that make it special, have a passion and want to be involved.”

By the Numbers:

Aurora Sports Park
Opened: 2002
Acres: 220
Fields: 23 multi-use fields, 12 softball fields
Scheduled tournaments/events in 2013: 28 between May and September
Attendance per year: 1.5 million people including regional and national events
Biggest moneymaker: Colorado Fireworks Softball tournament, estimated $10 million in restaurant and lodging alone
Largest event: Far West Soccer Regional Championships in 2005 (240 boys and girls youth teams from 14 states)
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