Printing Equipment Lost In Sports One Fire

An early Saturday morning fire at Cookeville’s Sports One destroyed the company’s printing equipment.

Owner Bob Larrick said many leagues plan to start late seasons, and orders had just started being filled.

“Right when you start to go,” Larrick said, “It’s just another thing to kick you in the teeth and knock you down, but we’re going to get something as quick as we can back, so that we can take care of these orders that we have.”

Larrick said the printing machines were a near total loss. Their offices suffered water damage and their antiques and merchandise area sustained mostly smoke damage. Larrick said their focus right now is cleaning up water and smoke damage. They do not have a time frame yet for the major repairs. Due to Covid-19, adjusters have not been able to visit the building to assess the damage from the fire.

“They can’t come here to view everything, and they have to be here to view it to get things to proceed,” Larrick said, “So we’re kind of in a little bit of a stalemate right now waiting for them to be released, so that we can get things going.”

Larrick said they were fortunate and the damage to Sports One could have been much worse. He said that due to the age of the building, the timbers used in it’s construction kept the fire from spreading. The fire was contained to the printing area.

Sports One will reopen and begin filling orders as soon as feasibly possible, Larrick said. Estimates of inventory loss are unknown at this time.

“It’s just a matter of us getting our sleeves rolled up, get back to work, get the thing back going again,” Larrick said. “It’s gonna take some time, but we’ll be back.”