Alachua County Sports and Events Center (Gainesville, FL): Indoor Track Guide

If you are headed to the Alachua County Sports and Events Center for a track meet, it is almost certainly indoor season. From January to early March the building in Gainesville's Celebration Pointe district runs a meet almost every weekend, from college invitationals to the Florida High School Indoor Championships to NAIA nationals. Here is what to know before you go.

Where Is the Alachua County Sports and Events Center?

The center is at 4870 Celebration Pointe Ave., Gainesville, FL 32608, inside the Celebration Pointe shopping and entertainment district on the southwest side of Gainesville.

• From I-75: Celebration Pointe sits a quarter mile west of I-75 at Archer Road, and the main entrance is off Archer Road.
• From Butler Plaza: head west on SW 30th Ave. or SW 30th Place and cross the bridge over I-75 on Celebration Pointe Ave.

If you have a free morning before or after the meet, our guide to the best places to run in Gainesville has shakeout routes, from the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail to San Felasco Hammock, and every race in Gainesville is listed on our city page.

The Indoor Track

This is the building's big draw for runners: it has Florida's only indoor banked track. The track is a World Athletics-compliant, portable Mondo 200-meter oval with six banked lanes, plus an eight-lane 60-meter sprint straight. Indoor meets here contest the full program, from the 60 and 60 hurdles to the 3000, plus the jumps, the pole vault, the shot put and the weight throw.

The building itself is 130,000 square feet, with 90,000 square feet of open floor and about 3,500 spectator seats. When it is not set up for track, the same floor holds 10 basketball courts, 18 volleyball courts or 21 pickleball courts, and there is separate cheer space and indoor batting cages. Alachua County built it as a public-private partnership with Viking Companies, the developer of Celebration Pointe, for about $38 million. It opened in stages: nine indoor track meets ran in early 2023 as a soft opening, and the official grand opening was June 10, 2023.

A banked 200m track runs differently from the outdoor 400m ovals most Florida high schoolers train on. The turns are tighter and tilted, so a 200 or 400 here is not a straight comparison with an outdoor time, and distance races are twice as many laps as outdoors.

Meets at the Sports and Events Center

The indoor season is the center's busiest stretch for track. The 2026 season ran:

• Jan. 15-18: Jimmy Carnes Invitational, hosted by the Gainesville Sports Commission and named for the late Olympic coach. It opens the season.
• Jan. 23-24: Sports and Events Center Invitational and Multi-Event.
• Jan. 24-25: Sunshine Showcase and US Pentathlon Challenge.
• Jan. 31-Feb. 1: The Legends of Alachua County Invitational.
• Feb. 6: Visit Gainesville, Alachua County Indoor Classic.
• Feb. 7: Florida High School Indoor Championships.
• Feb. 8: FLYRA Youth Indoor Championships.
• Feb. 20-21: Sun Conference and Southern States Conference combined indoor championships.
• Feb. 23: Peach Belt Conference Championships.
• March 3-7: NAIA Men's and Women's Indoor Track and Field Championships.

The center has hosted the NAIA indoor championships before (Feb. 27-March 2, 2025), and it hosted the 2025 World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships, March 23-30, 2025, the first time that championship was held in the United States. The masters are coming back: the 2027 World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships are scheduled here for March 18-26, 2027.

Florida High School Indoor Championships

The Florida High School Indoor Championships is the big high school meet of the winter here. It is not an FHSAA state championship (the FHSAA does not hold an indoor state meet); it is an open championship meet timed by Half Mile Timing. These were the running-event winners on Feb. 7, 2026, from the official results on TFRRS:

Event	Boys winner	Time	Girls winner	Time
60m	Davion Crumitie, Rickards	6.73	Lee Peters, Foundation Academy	7.33
200m	Davion Crumitie, Rickards	21.29	Dasia Reed, Montverde Academy	23.60
400m	Hayden Bearden, IMG Elite	48.47	Nakira Hudson, Montverde Academy	55.07
800m	Miles Wicks, unattached	1:53.35	Alexandrea Fraser, IMG Elite	2:12.97
Mile	Evan Spreitzer, Holy Trinity	4:15.25	Atarah Robinson, 813 Elite Track & Field	4:57.54
3000m	Axel Sallault, Performance Academy	8:24.75	Arabella Duffell, unattached	10:03.38
60m hurdles	Christopher Lawley, IMG Elite	7.86	Nia Armstrong, VAST Track and Field	8.53

Team names are printed as they were entered in the results; many athletes enter indoor meets through clubs rather than their high schools.

Alachua County Sports and Events Center Records

Neither the county nor the Gainesville Sports Commission publishes an official list of facility records, and MileSplit's venue page labels its own lists "not official records." The best record of what has been run here is the meet results themselves: the college and high school indoor meets on TFRRS and the 2025 World Masters Indoor results.

Is There Cross Country at the Sports and Events Center?

No. The center is an indoor building with no cross country course, so it has no XC course rating. You may see it on results sites next to cross country tables, but high school 5K races are run elsewhere. For Florida cross country results and course comparisons, use our Florida XC database, and for a real Florida cross country venue see our Florida Horse Park course guide.

Meet Day: Parking, Hotels and Food

• Parking: Celebration Pointe has surface lots, side-street parking and two parking garages on the west side of the property, the Orange Deck (south of Hotel Indigo) and the Blue Deck (north of the 5001 Building). Visit Gainesville lists more than 2,200 spaces in the two covered garages.
• Tickets: each meet sets its own admission, so check the meet information page for the event you are going to.
• Hotels: Hotel Indigo is on site at Celebration Pointe, and the Gainesville Sports Commission also lists the nearby HOM Hotel & Suites.
• Food: restaurants are within walking distance inside Celebration Pointe, and the building has its own sports bar.
• Weather: the meet is indoors, so heat and rain are not a factor. Bring layers; January mornings in Gainesville can be cold on the walk in from the garage.

For other Florida track venues, see our Hodges Stadium guide, home of the FHSAA outdoor state championships, or browse all Florida running venue guides.

Photo: the banked track during the 2025 World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships, by Emptywords, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped.