{"id":25958170,"date":"2020-12-10T06:27:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-10T06:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakenona1stg.wpenginepowered.com\/get-in-the-game\/"},"modified":"2024-09-05T11:22:13","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T11:22:13","slug":"get-in-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/blog\/get-in-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Get In The Game"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

XL Soccer World opens in Lake Nona<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Ciaran McArdle is a Laureate Park resident, father of four, entrepreneur, and CEO of XL Soccer World<\/a>, Lake Nona\u2019s new home for indoor soccer and more. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new 50,000-square-foot state-of-the-art\nfacility is the company\u2019s 10th location across the U.S., second in the Orlando\narea, and the first one they\u2019ve built from the ground up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The facility offers a variety of youth\nprograms and adult leagues for players of all ages and skill levels with two\nturf fields and two multipurpose courts all under one roof for year-round,\nair-conditioned play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this Q&A, McArdle shares the origin story of XL Soccer, how they customized this new location, and what\u2019s next for the world of soccer in Lake Nona. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Q. What led you to Lake Nona?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My wife and I were living in Longwood when\nwe heard about Lake Nona. We thought the community and its focus on healthy\nactive lifestyles sounded like a great place for an indoor soccer facility. One\nday we decided to go for a drive through Lake Nona and loved it so much we\nsigned on a house in Laureate Park three days later. We\u2019ve lived here for five\nand half years now \u2013 so close to the new facility I can walk or bike to work!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. Tell us about your background \u2013 How\ndid you get into coaching soccer?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My background is in electronic\nengineering. While I was in school at the University of York in England, I spent\nmy summers coaching soccer in the U.S. I thought I\u2019d eventually get a real job\nin avionics until I met my business partner when I was coaching soccer at\nHarvard in Boston.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We both love to play soccer and have an\nentrepreneurial spirit and thought the best way for American youth to\nexperience soccer was to show them how we play in England. So, we started a\ncompany together called XL Soccer Tours \u2013 which still exists today \u2013 that takes\nyouth teams to England to train with professionals, play against English youth\nteams, and go to live games. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several years ago, we had an opportunity to buy an indoor soccer facility in Raleigh, North Carolina to use as an office for our travel business. That became our first location and the business snowballed from there. We opened our second indoor soccer facility in Winter Park and then continued to find other locations. The Lake Nona location is unique because it\u2019s the first we\u2019ve built from scratch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. What\u2019s new and different about the\nLake Nona location of XL Soccer World?  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Lake Nona, we had the opportunity to customize the layout of our facility to include the best features from other locations. All of our other locations existed as warehouses or multisport facilities before we moved in. One thing we learned from other locations is that many were too big at about 120,000 to 150,000-square-feet. Our facility in Lake Nona is a much more efficient use of space at 50,000-square-feet.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside, we installed bike racks so\nresidents can cycle to practices and games. Inside, we created a reception desk\nthat doubles as a sports bar where you can hang out with the family, get a\ndrink, have a snack and watch the games in a more welcoming environment where\nkids are free to run around. Above the playing fields, we included new\nstate-of-the-art scoreboard technology that allows you to see the score, watch\ninstant replays, and more. Games are recorded so your team can hang out in the\nlounge after the final score and watch the play back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Q. What other sports can you play at XL Soccer in Lake Nona?<\/strong>
Our Lake Nona location is one of three facilities in our portfolio that is exclusively for indoor soccer. All other locations are multi-sport. However, in Lake Nona we included two special courts for a different kind of soccer called futsal<\/a> that is played on a hard surface with a denser ball. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Futsal is very popular in South America\nand becoming more popular here, so we offer a youth futsal program and adult\nfutsal league. We designed the futsal court on a multipurpose surface so you\ncan also play volleyball, basketball, flag football, and lacrosse there as\nwell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. What is your vision for the future\nof XL Soccer World in Lake Nona? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our new\nfacility will become the center of soccer in Lake Nona. Expect soccer fans of\nall ages and skill levels cheering each other on and watching professional live\nsoccer games from across all the major international club leagues, crucial\ncountry qualifiers, and tournaments. To this end, we value our current\npartnership with the Orlando City Soccer Club at our Winter Park location and\nlook forward to collaborating with them in Lake Nona in the near future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re also excited to host regional and\nnational tournaments in Lake Nona. The first one will be a regional adult tournament\nin February 2021 followed by the national youth soccer championship in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information or to sign-up for\nclasses, visit www.xlnona.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

XL Soccer World opens in Lake Nona.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":25958439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_crdt_document":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[191],"tags":[173,197,131,201,450,202,143,155],"class_list":["post-25958170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-amenities","tag-events","tag-health","tag-parks","tag-soccer","tag-spaces","tag-sports","tag-training"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25958170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25958170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25958170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25958439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25958170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25958170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakenona.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25958170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}