Tennis great Andre Agassi has called it home. So has Wimbledon champion Maria Sharapova.
Paula Creamer and Landon Donovan went to school there. Kobe Bryant and Derek Jeter have been in for tune-ups. Future NFL and NBA hopefuls flock there for camps and training sessions designed to help them move up the draft boards. Olympic teams, like U.S. Soccer, use it as a base for pretournament training.
In some ways, it is easier to list the world-class athletes who don’t have ties to IMG Academies, one of the world’s largest and most successful multi-sport training and education camps.
The 300-acre facility borders 34th Street, near Bayshore High School and Manatee Community College. What began as an idea by tennis guru Nick Bollettieri and a few courts has grown into a facility that encompasses the Bollettieri Tennis Academy, the David Leadbetter Golf Academy, the Baseball, Basketball, Soccer and Swimming Academies, the International Performance Institute, The Pendleton School, the Wellness Spa and the IMG Academies Golf and Country Club.
There also are dormitories, meeting rooms, fitness centers, playing fields (including seven soccer fields, two baseball fields and 56 tennis courts), pools and a complex of residential units, or villas, where some families live while their kids pursue their athletic dreams. They include Academy Park Villas, Legend’s Bay and Legend’s Cove luxury homes.
As much as IMG Academies caters to the athletic elite, it also helps create the next generation of them: There are more than 750 full-time students and 12,000 junior, collegiate, adult and professional athletes in attendance each year at a site which has been described as “jock paradise.”
It may be the most famous place in Bradenton, but the walled complex is not so much a part of the city as an island within it, a place where Monica Seles or Serena Williams can train in relative peace and quiet alongside kids who hope to follow in their footsteps.
Bollettieri has joked that when he started his tennis school “there was nothing out here but orange groves.” But when he launched his boarding school in the late 1970s, success soon followed, thanks to the coach’s work with stars such as Agassi and fellow tennis stars Jim Courier and Boris Becker.
IMG is famous world-wide as a representation agency for everything from fashion to sports, representing a spectrum of talent from Tiger Woods to Heidi Klum. The Academies complex is a small piece of the IMG puzzle, but a prominent one for the company. It’s also prominent for Bradenton, which has been mentioned in articles written about the facility for publications such as Business Week, Sports Illustrated and GQ. Bollettieri is a familiar face on national TV during Grand Slam tennis events, and more national exposure come from the famous athletes who still claim this as home — Creamer and Sharapova among them.
Not all of IMG Academies clients are rich, famous or even all that athletic. Corporations hold retreats at the facility, giving their people not only a place to meet, but also to take a few cuts in a batting cage, shoot some baskets, kick around a soccer ball or swim some laps, all while receiving top-of-the-line instruction. The 10,000-square-foot International Performance Instititute offers comprehensive fitness evaluations.
For the younger, more athletically gifted, the IMG experience includes daily instruction, mental conditioning, room, board, even enrollment at IMG’s private school, The Pendleton School. While most of us will never know that total-immersion experience, it is possible to catch a glimpse of IMG life inside the walls from time to time, including soccer tournaments and the annual Eddie Herr Junior Tennis Championships, which usually attracts more than 1,000 top junior players from as many as 70 countries.
They all come to Bradenton for one reason: To be part of the IMG experience.
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