Sports in New York City

Argentina?born soccer enthusiast Gustavo Szulansky opened Super Soccer Stars to provide the boroughs with a program that championed the personal development of youngsters rather than solely a skill-based focus. Since its debut in 2000, it's grown throughout the city, helping countless youngsters learn teamwork, boost confidence, and decrease arguments during home games played on the dining-room table. This rapid growth is due in part to the positive values Gustavo instilled from the first class. His coaches are carefully selected for their ability to cultivate a noncompetitive, sensitive approach to learning the game, and they dole out their knowledge in both classes and camps. Super Soccer Star's Kick & Play program features family-friendly classes that help tots 12?24 months old develop pre-soccer skills and physical skill sets simultaneously. During classes, a team of talented and enthusiastic instructors and an athletic duo of puppet friends named Mimi and Pepe buoy budding soccer players with positive reinforcement, individual attention, and the merry clickety-clack of cleated tap dances. Designed with the help of early-childhood specialists, each age-specific class helps players build skills at their own pace with positive reinforcement, individual attention, and engaging original music.

At City WingTsun, chief instructor Sifu Alex Richter emphasizes the respect, discipline, and courtesy that is so important to traditional Chinese martial arts, but aims to dispel the hindrance of mysticism with modern teaching methods and training protocols. The result of his efforts—a kung fu program accessible to today’s youths and adults—has garnered the attention of media including USA TODAY and Harper’s Bazaar. City WingTsun’s classes welcome both casual and intense practitioners, shepherding all students toward greater confidence, levels of health, and the self-defense skills needed to acquire a belt from a monster-inhabited closet. The studio’s full schedule caters to women with female-only classes and expands from kung fu to include special programming. This additional programming ranges from kettlebell fundamentals to practical weapons training, which teaches students to defend themselves with everyday objects such as keys, magazines, or the anvils they carry around in their bag.

As part of the Chelsea Piers Sports & Entertainment Complex, located at the historic Chelsea Piers, the Golf Club perches over the same port that once welcomed ships into New York City. Now, golfers tee up in the driving range's 52 heated and weather-protected stalls, which overlook the glinting waters of the Hudson River. Automatic tee-up systems position balls for launch across the 200-yard, net-enclosed fairway. A putting green allows patrons to improve their short game, and two Full Swing simulators encourage them to take hacks in virtual environs, transporting them to famous courses across the country or fifth-grade birthday parties where they missed the pi?ata. Children and adults alike can enlist in Golf Club at Chelsea Piers? classes, which stratify students by experience level. The 12-member coaching staff includes PGA and LPGA professionals, and sessions take place in a 2,000-square-foot teaching facility.

BumbleBee Tennis's wide spectrum of tennis programs for juniors and adults nurture players at every step of game development. Skilled instructors helm a variety of lessons from Beginner Group Tennis classes to private one-on-one intensives. All teachers are trained professionals and most have played competitively at the collegiate level. While helping students focus on technique and making solid contact with the ball, instructors also attempt to ensure that everyone from youngsters to veterans enjoys the game and knows how to count all the way to love. Adults interested more specifically in the cardiovascular aspect of the game can enroll in Cardio Tennis, a 60-minute class comprised of high-intensity drills and games that elevate heart rates into the aerobic zone and subsequently evaporate calories.

After serving as a krav maga officer for a special-ops unit in the Israeli Defense Forces, Matan Gavish relocated to New York, where he founded Krav Maga Academy. Stateside, Gavish has also served as a fitness officer in the U.S. Army, shared his expertise in the pages of the Washington Post and provided input on NYPD Tactical Training Unit techniques, all while running his academy full-time. Krav Maga Academy's curriculum imparts creative strike techniques, defense strategies against chokes and grabs, and methods for neutralizing attackers through a krav maga–centered schedule that also touches on MMA and Brazilian jiujitsu. Beginners taste combat in Level 1 trainings and all-levels classes, and more experienced fighters ramp up their workouts during upper-level classes or sparring sessions. On Fridays in Jeans, instructors teach students to fight in street clothes or with asphalt chunks of actual streets.

It’s safe to say Catherine Fox knows her way around a pool. She won an Olympic gold medal for her ability to find her way from end to end. Partnering with Swim Jim owner Jim Spiers, a trainer for 2012 Olympics Bronze medalist Lia Neal, the pair transformed their expertise into a curriculum that helps others learn to love the water as they do. The resulting program, titled the Underwater Schoolhouse, forms the cornerstone of every class held at Swim Jim. Teachers take on students of all ages, focusing first on helping to cure land dwellers’ inherent nervousness around water. To do this, they use a combination of encouragement and humor, never pushing a student further than they’re willing to go. Once students take the plunge, the coaches focus on teaching the mechanics of a variety of strokes, such as how to kick during breaststroke or how to emerge gracefully from the chrysalis before butterfly stroke.