The last time these guys went sledding, they were using trash can lids on a modest hill near their home in Dorchester. Today, Armani Martinez and his family have driven 45 minutes north to go tubing at the newly reopened sports park in Amesbury, which bills itself as the fastest and steepest snow-tubing hill in New England.
Renamed the New England Sports Park, the facility began churning out machine-made snow and selling tickets this month, one year after the previous owners filed for bankruptcy protection. Original owner Ted Dipple, who opened the park in 1993 with former partner (and former Boston Bruin) Brad Park, has returned to restore the reputation of the business as one of the best winter sports bargains in the region.
At the end of an exhilarating run down the park’s nearly 1,000-foot slope, the 14-year-old Martinez grinned broadly as he regrouped with his aunt Litza Santiago, who had been waiting with fiancé Chico Cruz at the bottom of the hill. Martinez was dressed a little more appropriately for the cold than his cousin Adrian Pitre, 24, who laughed as he noted the snow covering his canvas sneakers.
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Cruz wore a ski mask that covered his face, with a GoPro video camera strapped around his forehead. He said he bought the camera specifically for this sledding excursion.
“I don’t even know if I’m using it right,” he said with a smile, blowing puffs of vapor out of the mask’s mouth hole.
Standing outside the ticket office, J.P. Searle said he was hired as the park’s president after he met Dipple while calling on the business several years ago as a snow-grooming equipment vendor.
“I’ve been in the ski business my whole life,” said Searle, a former competitive skier.
The park will concentrate on the original core of the business, said Searle: winter tubing – sledding on inner tubes – and rentals for soccer and other sports on the artificial turf fields that surround the lodge at the foot of the hill. The owners of what was then called the Amesbury Sports Park were issued a cease-and-desist order last August after they staged obstacle races that spilled over the grounds into protected wetlands and private property.
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Because of some complaints about service, overcrowding, and a sometimes incompatible variety of event bookings under the old ownership, Dipple decided to come back into the business.
“He didn’t want to see a dream go that way,” said Searle.
For Newton’s Guocheng Yuan, the park’s rocky past was irrelevant to his enjoying a day in the snow with his two children. Nathan, 8, led the way back to the line for the magic carpet while Yuan tugged Leah, 6, who chattered excitedly as she sat in her tube.
His children have tried skiing, he said, but had not been tubing before. Putting the kids in ski lessons is a lot easier than pulling them around in inner tubes, Yuan joked, though it seemed clear he was happy to put in the work.
A few dozen yards away, a group of kids from Andover whooped and laughed as they reached the bottom of the slope, holding onto the handles on one another’s tubes to form a moving mass of Olympic rings. As they coasted to a stop just before reaching the protective plastic snow fence, their au pair, Mariana Vedovello, struggled to get out of her tube, laughing as she held her selfie stick aloft.
“I’m from Brazil,” she said as they tromped back to the line for another run. “We don’t have snow.”
A few parents sat inside the clubhouse, watching their kids hurtle down the rolling hill. The new management has hired a kitchen staff, and an upstairs office space has been remodeled into a party room for birthdays and other events. To reduce wait times, the staff has implemented three blocks of ticketing each day ($25 per person, with night and early bird specials).
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“We’re going back to making sure everyone leaves with a smile on their face,” said Searle.
On its first weekend back in business, it appeared the sports park was well on its way. The members of the Dorchester crew said they planned to stay until the end of their midday block, at 5.
But Santiago conceded she was thinking about taking a break.
“I’m ready for a hot chocolate,” she said.
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com.