For youth teams from Bloemendaal
Interactive game park · Beverwijk
An outing for your
sports team
when the pitch is closed
About twenty minutes from Bloemendaal to an indoor game park in Beverwijk. 9 game rooms where you sprint, jump and talk it through. No screen, no controller, no cancellations.
- 20 min drive from Bloemendaal
- 24.50 euros per player, from 5
- 9 game rooms, all indoors
A village that plays much of its sport outdoors
Bloemendaal is small and plays a lot of sport, and most of it happens on grass or artificial turf. That works fine until it does not: a waterlogged pitch, a cancelled Saturday, a training session that stops after a quarter of an hour.
PlayKinetix is an indoor game park on the Handelskade in Beverwijk. 9 game rooms with light-up floors that react to your feet, walls covered in buttons that light up and challenges you can only win together. A wristband keeps score.
First, about that word: gaming
To a coach, gaming sounds like a sofa, a screen and a headset. Exactly what they are trying to wean their youth players off.
That is not what this is. There is sprinting, turning and jumping; you are on your feet the whole time. Each room explains what you do in it.
Two kinds of team outing, and they call for opposite things
An outing for a team that has played together for two seasons is a different thing from an outing for a brand-new intake. Those two often get lumped together.
Does the group already know each other? Then do not force anything. Those players want matches, a scoreboard and the right to go on about it for the rest of the season. Put them in fixed pairs against each other and it runs itself.
Is the line-up new, two teams that will be mixed together in September? Then the opposite works. Put the small groups together yourself. In a room you can only win by talking to each other, a child is chatting within ten minutes to someone whose name they have only just heard.
The season is on hold, you are not
The months when a team gets the most out of an outing are exactly the months when there is little to do outdoors: the winter break, the weeks when the pitches are shut, the gap around Christmas.
Here that makes no difference. Everything happens indoors, at the same temperature in July as in January. A cancelled Saturday can sometimes still be rescued this way, if there is space left that day.
Where a team manager usually gets stuck
Four objections that always come up, with the honest answer.
Eighteen players plus staff
Seventy people fit into the park. A full team is a small part of that. You go round the 9 rooms in rotations, not in a queue behind one game.
An hour and a half, with a break
45 minutes of play, a break with crisps and unlimited squash, then another 45 minutes. The second block is fiercer: by then everyone knows how it works.
Too childish for a JO15?
The challenges are not complicated; the pace is the problem. Whoever wants to win has to run hard. A squad of sixteen-year-olds is just as sensitive to that as a JO11.
Who pays for this
24.50 euros per person, from five people. A team of sixteen stays under four hundred euros. The team kitty plus a small contribution, and nobody has to chase a payment request three times.
Twenty minutes, and the transport does not arrange itself
From Bloemendaal it is about twenty minutes' drive to the Handelskade. Further than your own ground, true, and it is the question that will take over the parents' group chat. Count on four cars or so and agree in advance who drives. Parking is free, right outside the door.
The train is less convenient: from Bloemendaal you change at Haarlem, and from Beverwijk station it is another eight minutes on foot.
What clubs ask us
Can we come on a weekday after training?
Partly. On Monday and Tuesday the park is closed. On Wednesday and Thursday you can start until 18:00, so that works out as after school rather than after training. Friday evening does work: 22:00 is the latest start time then.
How many players do we need, and what if two are ill?
The Sport Deal applies from five people, so a full team is comfortably above that. Two cancellations on the morning itself will not take you below the minimum. Do let us know, so the arrangement still adds up.
What does it cost per player?
24.50 euros per person: 45 minutes of play, a break with crisps and unlimited squash, then another 45 minutes. For 26.50 euros it becomes the Sport Deal Plus, with a soft drink. You can hold a date with no obligation first.
Can the team staff have a beer, like in the clubhouse?
No, no alcohol is served here. On the other hand, the staff usually end up playing along, and nobody has to clear up afterwards.
Other towns nearby
Is your group coming from a different town? Then the route and the journey time are set out separately there.
Pick a date before the winter break starts
In the weeks when there is no football or hockey, everyone wants to come at once. Book a Saturday early and you have more to choose from.