Sports and recreation represent one of Wilmington’s underestimated and fastest-growing catalysts of economic impact. The city has no major or minor league sports franchises – or an iconic baseball team, such as the Durham Bulls or Carolina Hurricanes.

What it does have is several growing sports entities that draw fans and players including the Wilmington Sharks (baseball), Wilmington Hammerheads (youth soccer), Port City FC (men’s and women’s soccer) and destination races such as the Battleship Half Marathon, Wilmington Marathon and Ironman 70.3.

“Sports tourism is among the fastest-growing tourism sectors, and Wilmington has the built-in attributes of good weather, beach access, a central Southeastern North Carolina location, the Riverwalk, great restaurants,” said Kim Hufham, president and CEO of the Wilmington and Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“If we look at just one example, the new nCino Sports Park is already developing as a major draw for a variety of sporting events,” she continued. “The CVB sales team recently booked a regional, all-girls soccer event with Elite Clubs National League (ECNL) that brought in 1,500-2,000 people for a tournament held from Oct. 12 to the 14th. With more than 2,500 hotel rooms booked, revenue was estimated to exceed $2 million during the area’s off-peak season.”

She added that the CVB sales staff is working with organizers to potentially bring USA Ultimate Frisbee and USA Archery events to nCino park, both with large national tournaments.
 

NEW PARK PITCH

The building and facilities gestation period for the park on U.S. 421 was unexpectedly long, due to the obstacles of Hurricane Florence in 2018 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The city of Wilmington passed bond funding for the park in 2016. It officially opened in October.

Though the road to get to the near-completion phase of this $20 million park expansion was indeed rocky, the Hammerheads now have in place the organizational foundation to provide a professionalized experience geared to their young players.

It did not precisely start with the 2015 hiring of executive director Carson Porter, but he’s been instrumental in building the organization with the requisite long-term vision.

Porter, a Charlotte native who played soccer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, came to Wilmington after stints as the assistant men’s soccer coach at Wake Forest University and as a U.S. Youth National Team Coach.

He initially served as the head coach and technical director for the Wilmington Hammerheads professional team and transitioned into his role as executive director of the youth soccer club in 2015.   As essentially a soccer lifer, Porter brings passion that combines an appreciation for both the business side and the learning and development side for their young players.

“The World Cup is coming here next year,” he said, “and although they’re not coming to Wilmington, the impact of seeing those teams on TV playing in Seattle or New York … That’s real.”

Porter adds that he has had conversations with the leadership of naming sponsor nCino and other supporters of the Hammerheads.

“They have kids of their own here who play sports, especially soccer,” he said, “and they’re mindful of what things will be like for their employees and top talent they want to attract. If those parents from outside of Wilmington see a great opportunity here for their kids, it can be a relocation difference-maker.”

Currently, the organization has 13 full-time staff and 40 part-time staff, with an overall concentration on coaches and skills development.

The Hammerheads have five distinct age and competitive levels starting with age 6 to 19, and the nCino Sports Park has 11 fields, five that have lights. “Maintenance is an ongoing focus,” Porter said, “and we want to have nice fields, not pass-fail. The per field lighting cost is about $200,000, so to fully equip them we have to invest about $1.2 million.”

The Hammerheads season is about 10 months long, from the end of May to the end of August and focuses on creative programming – camps, instructional sessions and continued opportunities to just “feel the joy of playing.”

Also this year in local soccer, the relatively new grassroots, semi-professional club Port City FC changed leagues and launched the first season of its affiliated women’s team – a Women’s Premier Soccer League expansion team.

The men’s team this year became part of the National Premier Soccer League, after being a part of the United Premier Soccer League.

“Most players are local. They have a love for Wilmington and the soccer culture we are building,” Haven Lewis, Port City FC’s general manager, said earlier this year.

BASEBALL FAN BASE

The Wilmington Sharks are one of 15 teams that are part of the Coastal Plain League, a collegiate summer league featuring top-notch college baseball players. League alumni include current major leaguers Justin Verlander and Ryan Zimmerman and eventual NFL quarterback Russell Wilson.

They play a busy, compressed 48-game schedule beginning late-May through early-August.

The league is also packed with a number of clever alliterative or rhymed teams, including The Greenville Yard Gnomes, Morehead City Marlins and (true) Macon Bacon. Like the Hammerheads’ Porter, the Sharks’ team president Brett Bloomquist is an ex-player, having pitched for the team in 2008 until he blew out his elbow. Unlike Porter, Bloomquist is just getting started in his new role, having begun in January of this year.

Bloomquist had subsequently joined the Navy and embarked on 12 years as an intelligence officer. He segued into about five years as a consultant, advising companies on risk issues, when he got a call in 2023 from the league commissioner, a friend who mentioned that the Sharks were looking for a GM.

He decided he was ready for his full-circle moment.

“The old saying applies: Life happens when you’re busy making other plans,” he said. “I didn’t have much runway before start of the season, but together with tickets director Dawn Fowler, we brainstormed as much fan-friendly, offbeat stuff we could do to juice up the atmosphere.”

 Those offbeat ideas – some carryovers – include mass crowd renditions of Baby Shark, the Shuckin’ Shack Strikeout tracker, the gift of a free smoothie to all when someone hit a triple. 

“And it’s just the stuff that can happen,” Bloomquist said, “like when a foul ball is followed by the sound of a fake window shattering, and the glass company sponsor is there to give the owner a check for a total windshield replacement for one that was actually hit. There’s something about baseball that allows the old-school and the unexpected to happen simultaneously.”

Growing business support, such as the Sharks’ sponsorship from Excite Credit Union, GE Aerospace and Novant Health, for example, also is a key part of expanding the club’s operations. Attendance averaged about 1,000 per home game in the gravitational pull of a stadium sell-out but not quite there.

“My goal,” Bloomquist said, “is to sell out every home game, and eventually expand our crowd capacity.”
 

DRAWING RUNNERS

Wilmington has earned a reputation as an ideal locale for a variety of running events, including a late October Ironman event, The Ironman 70.3 North Carolina triathlon race.

Two other prominent races, The Battleship Half Marathon held on Nov. 16, and the upcoming Feb. 22 Wilmington Marathon and Half Marathon, are organized and managed by Tom Clifford’s company, Without Limits. He and his team also manage six other races in North and South Carolina.

“We’ve seen the Wilmington Marathon grow into a destination race,” Clifford said. “If you’re a runner in the Northeast, February is a good time to head South for a break in the colder weather and a chance to compete in something you love.”

Managing races and running the booming coaching component of his business is something he loves, while his own running achievements include top finishes in the Boston and New York City marathons, as well as finishing first in 2017 in the Wilmington Ironman race.

“It’s really important to continually explore how to improve the course,” he said. “For the recent Battleship race, we reversed the course, so that runners had an improved experience. Sometimes the inconvenient becomes something better. Last year, the paving of the Greenfield Lake trail was not yet done. It is now, and it’s made for a better runner’s experience. It’s what this is all about.”