Crowtree Leisure Centre is an indoor sports centre based in the centre of Sunderland, England.
The sports complex has a vast range of facilities and can accommodate many recreational sports such as football, Squash, snooker and Badminton among others. There is also a swimming pool and diving pool, but these closed following the opening of Sunderland Olympic Pool.
The centre is also linked to The Bridges Shopping Centre.
It was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1976.
The once popular Ice Rink closed in 2000. The rink used to be home of The Sunderland Chiefs ( Senior ), The Sunderland Tomahawks (u19s), The Sunderland Arrows (U16s) & The Sunderland Commanches (U12s), a number of recreational Ice Hockey also played out of Crowtree including the Sunderland Cobra's and the Crowtree Bandits, now known as the Newcastle Predators playing out of Whitley Bay Ice Rink.
Swimming and Gym Facilities at the leisure centre closed on 20 April 2008, replaced by the Sunderland Aquatic Centre next to the Stadium of Light.
Crowtree is still in use with the Mayor's ball being held there every year and the indoor bowls facilities still in use as well as a gym set up for people with cardiac complications.
On 24–25 March 2012 Crowtree played host to(SunnyCon) Sunderland first Japanese culture and anime convention. Despite the cities lack of Japanese influence apart from Nissan the event was able to attract over 900 visitors for the weekend. In the first year SunnyCon had big name voice actors Sabat (Voice of various DBZ characters and many other anime characters) and Taylor (Voice of Ash Ketchum from Pokémon and various other anime characters) also Dragonball abridged star MasakoX as guest host. The convention was an unprecedented success impressing the UK anime community and establishing itself as a future fixture in the UK convention scene setting a blueprint for first time conventions on how to run a successful first time convention. The convention was partly funded by Sunderland city council and partly from Tuckys Anime(Tuckys Anime).
Read more about Crowtree Leisure Centre: Future of Crowtree
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