KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
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Gardner is a growing community that loves its sports. Now, there’s a sporting goods store in town that hopes to love the community back just as much.
“We're definitely a sports town,” said Matt Griffin, Hometown Sports Gear co-owner. “We've had great success with football the last couple years, a huge wrestling team, track has almost 300 athletes at the high school level, so we're definitely a huge sports town.”
It’s the town of former Royals outfielder Bubba Starling; Cassie Wait, who led Kansas volleyball to the NCAA Final Four in 2015; and an uncannily successful pole-vault tradition. But finding gear for those athletes often required a trip out of town.
“Having two boys in high school, we always were running down to the big box stores in Overland Park,” Griffin said.
Last September, Griffin was ready to leave his job as a marketing director, so he talked with his wife, Laci Griffin, on the drive back from a family trip to Colorado.
“I just started talking about what we could do, what does Gardner need?” he said. “My father-in-law (Don Metler) had always talked about a sporting goods store, so we got home from that vacation and went to Groundhouse Coffee here in Gardner, and started putting it on paper. That was mid-September, and now it's real.”
Hometown Sports Gear, 929 E. Lincoln Lane, opened March 8. It has a hyper-local feel with the wall above the stocked shelves peppered with photos of athletes and their families from the community.
“We wanted it to really feel like it was Gardner, so we did a professional photo shoot to get the kids in,” Griffin said. “We've had grandparents come in and they're like, ‘I heard my grandkids are up here,’ so they'll walk through and kind of find their kids and grandkids, and things like that.”
There are cubby-holes near the register with balls that kids are encouraged to play with in the store.
“We want it to be just a place people want to come and do their sports shopping, not just another retail store,” Griffin said. “It’s a place where they go and they feel Gardner. That's why we wanted to really invest in the wall mural and make it something that’s just not another retail store.”
The merchandise reflects that. There are mouthpieces and shoes or cleats to try on, gloves, balls, headgear and even pickleball equipment for enthusiasts of all ages, but it’s the Trailblazers gear that is only available at Gardner-Edgerton or the local Price Chopper that stands out.
“We offer gear and things like that that you can't really get anywhere else,” Griffin said. “The middle school gear, we’re the only place in town.”
The other signature local touch is a true connection with the community.
The Griffins invited more than three dozen coaches from the area to preview the store and took their suggestions on the gear kids needed most, allowing Hometown Sports Gear to stock brands and select other equipment tailored to Gardner’s needs.
To celebrate Father’s Day, Hometown Sports Gear has partnered with two of its strip-mall neighbors, Planet Sub and ExBEERiment Brewing, for a mini-golf event from 2 to 4 p.m. on June 14, giving the community a chance to come see for itself how it aims to “get Team Gardner in gear.”
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