It’s been years in the making, but Mikey’s Sports Shack is officially open for business. Carmi Chamber representatives dropped in Saturday afternoon to officially cut the ribbon and welcome Michael Serafini and family to the business community. One of the Serafini’s daughters (WRUL’s 2024 Female Athlete of the Year Mara Serafini) was a standout athlete at Carmi-White County and that helped fuel her father’s dream to open the facility.
A few years ago when Mara was in high school, we got to watch her play. There’s a lot of athletes that we saw that had the opportunity to go to college if they just had that little extra oomph. And in here people can practice basketball, pickleball, volleyball, and also softball and batting cages so that way they can get that and actually have a higher chance of going to college.
Mikey’s Sports Shack was designed by the Serafinis themselves and took some consideration. In addition to being set up to maximize breezeways, ADA accessibility, and afford for private bathrooms, Serafini says it’s also designed to set up for any of four major sports offered with relatively quick set up.
Serafini says while the original goal was to provide an outlet for young athletes to hone skills, it’s potential goes far beyond that and he’s happy to make the space available and importantly, affordable for a variety of uses.
It’s actually for both of those crowds and more. You can be 8 years old, 6 years old and play and have fun in here. A lot of families have been in here already. We’ve had some people actually training in baseball and actually have some kids in here under the instruction of a college player. We’ve actually also had some people ask if we have tables so they can set up Dungeons and Dragons games, Magic the Gathering for all the card players out there. There’s also some people in town that teach the aerobics and the yoga. They don’t have really a place to do it at. Someone can rent this building and do whatever they want in a one-hour time period.
Making the space functional was important. Making it affordable was equally imperative to Serafini.
That’s $10 an hour for one person. Two people come in, there would be a total of $20, $10 for each person. Up to four people. And once you hit that magic number of four, it’s a flat rate of 25. You can have the maximum amount of people in here, which is 54, according to our fire code, and it would be $25. So that opens it up for reunions, wedding receptions, anniversaries, anything like that. Just no alcohol.
You can learn more and book online at https://www.mikeyssportsshack.com/.