Bladium in Stapleton had long been known for having an indoor inline hockey arena, but just less than a year ago, all of that changed. “We decided to just focus on indoor soccer,” said Footium manager Tim Kesterson. “It has been much more profitable, and we don’t have to deal with all that equipment and the people skating around in here. Just much easier.”
The change did not come as a surprise to most people. “Our team would come in and see the tens of teams waiting to play soccer, so we knew it was a matter of time before they would dump the hockey,” said inline hockey player Rick LaPedis. “It was depressing when it finally happened, but we were expecting it.”
Bladium stuck with the name as they wanted to stick with their roots, and believed it wouldn’t cause any confusion. “We really wanted to fight through it and keep our name,” said Kesterson. “But we were receiving dozens of calls every day asking about our hockey program, and then we would get walk ins wearing all of their hockey equipment. We understood that it was pretty confusing.”
Bladium essentially placed a ballot box at the front desk requesting people’s entries for a new name. After collecting about 500 different suggestions, most of which were clearly not serious, the Bladium team decided to vote. “Footium” received about 80% of the vote, with “Indoor Soccer Place” coming in a distant second. “We believe we made the right choice,” said Kesterson. “It says who we are, but keeps a little piece of our past. Now, hopefully we won’t switch sports again and have to do the whole thing over.”]]>