Business
Focused On Safety, Not Maximizing Capacity
By Lindsay Field Penticuff
LakePoint Sports has worked tirelessly during the COVID-19 pandemic to reopen a safe campus for athletes and guests.
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in focus N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R
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arch 12, 2020, at 4:08 p.m. “That’s when we announced that LakePoint Sports would be postponing all sporting events on campus until further notice,” recalls Mark M. O’Brien, who was named President and CEO of LakePoint Sports in early 2019 and appointed to the Board of Directors in 2020. “We may have made our call to postpone our events and activities hours or moments before any other callssimilar decisions were made across the professional, collegiate and amateur sports landscape, but that’s because we wereLakePoint was in the throes of potentially hosting ana major gymnastics event and we wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing for all involved.” On that date, and at that time, O’Brien
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and his team decided to take a step back, much like everyone else across the country, and try to assess the situation surrounding COVID-19. “We were trying to understand the dynamic in which we were not only navigating as a business, but navigating with our team members, and the community in which we live and the sports industry we serve.” For O’Brien, it always starts with people. And as a private business, LakePoint Sports wanted to make sure they were in lockstep with national, state, and local leadership as to how they would manage their business during a global pandemic. “We were very, very cautious and sensitive as to when and how we would reopen,” he adds, “and we took our time.” That doesn’t mean operating a business
