New HQ for Annandale sports club
 |
| ABCG’s new headquarters |
The Annandale Boys and Girls Club plans to move into new larger quarters April 1. ABGC bought the former house at 4216 Annandale Road, formerly occupied by a plumbing company, because “we needed more space and more parking,” says the club’s president, Kip Germain. The club had been renting a smaller house on Columbia Pike across from Fuddruckers for decades.
ABGC has been organizing sports teams in Annandale since 1959. Soccer is the club’s most popular sport, by far. About 3,000 kids and adults are playing soccer in ABGC teams at all levels of expertise.
 |
| ABGC’s old home |
The club also has about 1,100 basketball players, 400 on lacrosse teams, 150 in football, 130 in baseball and T-ball, 80 in field hockey, 60 wrestlers, 40 cheerleaders, and 30 boxers. ABGC is considering reinstituting tennis lessons, Germain says.
Several former ABGC players went on to play sports professionally:
- Former Annandale High School student Bill Hamid, 21, became the youngest goalkeeper in major league soccer when he joined D.C. United in 2009. He is on the men’s national team and could be headed for the Olympics this summer.
- Soccer player Desmond Armstrong played on the U.S. men’s team in the 1990 World Cup and 1988 Olympics.
- Former Annandale High School student Clarence Goodson, who played soccer for ABGC when he was 6 and 7, plays professional soccer in Denmark and played earlier this month on the first U.S. team to beat Italy.
- Professional boxers Edgar “the Tiger” Torres and Todd Wilson both train at ABGC’s boxing gym at the Annandale Sports Center in Springfield. Wilson, known as “White Lightening,” is undefeated after 13 professional bouts.
