Wings West
5076 Sports DriveEarlier this summer, I started including the ice rinks we spend our weekends at on this blog. There’s usually a concession stand..some are better than others, but I still try to center it around food.
I haven’t done “our” ice rink yet because I was waiting for the competition that is hosted here. I’ve done all the other ice rinks on competition weekend so I figured I’d do our home rink that way as well.
L got in to ice skating a few years ago. We started her in Learn to Skate…then the pandemic hit. Once we felt comfortable going back, we went back to Learn to Skate. She was determined to get through the levels because she wanted to get in to the club. That happened last spring. We’re just wrapping up our 2nd year of competition and now B has joined her in the club as well.
Our home rink is Wings West in Texas Township. The two sheet ice rink is on Sports Drive just off 9th Street near the I-94 interchange. Built in 2002, the rink has two rinks, a restaurant, pro shop, and a gym.
The entrance to the rinks is on the side of the building. there’s some parking along the driveway here but most of the parking is either in the back or in the front where the entrance to the restaurant is.
Once inside, the pro shop is right inside the door. It’s an extension of Hockey Services which has a store on West Main Street near Mendards.
To get to the rinks, you have to go downstairs. You can watch from upstairs and you can access the bleachers to Blue Rink (the NHL size rink) from a long hallway between the rinks.
Once downstairs, you come to a second lobby. This is where you get your skates for public skate and it’s where a lot of the club skaters pile up their skate bags while they’re on the ice. There are a couple of picnic tables in the area and some benches to change in to skates.
I’ve mentioned it a couple of times, but there are two rinks. Red Rink is the smaller of the two rinks. There’s not as much seating and that seating is only accessible from the lobby in the bottom floor of the facility.
Blue Rink is the bigger of the rinks. It has a much bigger seating area that is accessible from the street level entry. This is the rink used when larger crowds are expected. The WMU Stallions Hockey Club plays here and there are several high schools that use this rink as their home rink.
The seating is plastic bleacher on concrete. The little kids starting skating learn quickly they need to put guards on to come find mom or dad in the stands. The heat isn’t always on when the kids are practicing but it was on for the competition so it was actually pretty comfortable in the seating area.
There are actually two food options on big event days at Wings West. There is a concession stand in the upstairs lobby that is open for big games and competitions. This was only open for a couple hours in the morning this year. They have the typical concession stand food. There’s candy, popcorn, and pretzels. All the snacks to keep the kids happy during those long days at the rink.
What makes Wings West different that almost all of the ice rinks we go to is beer. They serve beer at the concession stand and you can take it in to the seating area. Even on nights when the concession stand isn’t open, you can get a to-go cup from the restaurant and take it anywhere in the building. We’ve been there for public skates before where people are sitting in the team bench areas with a beer in their hand watching their kids skate.
They actually closed the concession stand at 11:00 which was a bummer. They were opening up the restaurant so they pushed people there instead. It was great the restaurant was open, but they don’t have the snack stuff which would have been nice to have.
The restaurant is such a great feature of this rink. Again, we haven’t been to anyplace that has a full service restaurant like this.
Old Burdick’s Wings West occupies the restaurant space. They were closed a lot during the pandemic and reopened pretty much with only pizza. They’re back to having a pretty robust menu and a damn tasty one. I haven’t blogged about this place in a few years but we eat there pretty often.
One of the great features of Burdick’s is the windows overlooking Blue Rink. There’s almost always something going on in the rink so getting a table next to the windows is always something we strive for.
I had a lot going on trying to get two kids in the right costume and in the right place at the right time so I didn’t have time to eat but once we got the kids to their coaches in the afternoon, I did go in and grab myself a Two Hearted to take in to the rink with me..to calm my nerves. It didn’t work but that was my excuse for getting a beer.
We spend so much time at Wings West it feels like we live there. There are some features I wish they had (heated seats is one) but we’ve quickly realized how lucky we are to have Wings West as our home rink. I think we’re all a little nervous right now with how many sheets of ice we’ll have after the new arena is built downtown but hopefully things won’t change too much here.
SW Michigan Dining 