EVERETT – For 18 years, Engineered Sports Therapy operated in what is now expected to be the outfield grass of a new Everett Outdoor Events Center for baseball, soccer and concerts.
For 18 years, 2205 Wall Street was the business home to Lance Miller and Bob Hamre who founded Engineered Sports Therapy, a physical therapy clinic, but now it’s been acquired by the city of Everett to be redeveloped into a sports and music stadium as the future home of the Aqua Sox baseball team.
Today, Engineered Sports Therapy’s new Everett home is 1502 Hewitt Ave. where they started 23 years ago and are re-opening those familiar doors to clients after buying the property in July.
“The 18-month search for a new clinic location was set in motion when the City of Everett announced plans to move forward with the new Everett Outdoor Events Center baseball stadium,” Miller tells the EverettPost.com. “Because our existing facility sat directly in center field,” Miller chides, “Engineered Sports was faced with a choice: trade in our treatment tables for baseball mitts or find a new home.”
The decision, Miller confides, was “Certainly a bittersweet moment. We’ve been at (that) location for 18 years, and it truly feels like home,” he says referencing the easy client access from Everett neighborhoods or I-5. “Moving was never part of our plan. At the same time, my business partner Bob Hamre and I are passionate local sports fans who want to see Everett thrive. Ultimately, we fully support Mayor (Cassie) Franklin’s vision and the long-term potential this project holds for our community—not just for sports, but as a premier hub for local events and entertainment.”
Miller says finding a replacement location for their 10,000-square-foot facility in downtown Everett was no easy task, but it reunited Miller with a former landlord and friend. “The turning point came nearly a year ago courtesy of local property owner Jim Staniford. Two decades earlier, Staniford had leased space to me and my business partner at 1502 Hewitt Ave. to train the Everett Silvertips hockey team and Everett Community College Baseball and Fastpitch Teams.”
Reconnecting at just the right moment, Miller says, “Staniford walked through the door with a timely solution: You are going to have to move, and I have just the building to sell you.”
Miller and Hamre first joined forces back in 2003 when they began working with a crew of teenagers who had just arrived in town to play hockey—the inaugural Everett Silvertips team. Hamre was the head athletic trainer. Miller served as lead physical therapist. Together they ran the off-ice strength and conditioning out of the very same location on Hewitt Ave. they just moved back into.
A few years later, Miller says, they founded Engineered Sports Therapy to fill a critical gap in Snohomish County: creating a true performance-rehabilitation facility tailored specifically for athletes and tactical professionals—including police, fire, military, and first responders.
“We knew that delivering high-level care required more than expertise,” Miller advises. “It demanded the physical space and specialized equipment to guide someone seamlessly from acute injury back to full competition or duty. That simply wasn’t possible in the traditional, space-constrained PT clinics of the era.”
Physical therapy has advanced considerably, Miller says, over the last 18 years as the Engineered Sports practice has grown, giving patients more specific options to bounce back from injury or surgery.
“There’s definitely been a shift in the PT profession toward active and passive modalities that handle both acute recovery and long-term tissue healing,” Miller begins. “While personalized ‘corrective exercises’ are at the core of our rehab methodology at Engineered Sports, we also rely on targeted modalities to drive cellular recovery, clear metabolic waste and reset dysfunctional movement patterns.”
He lists cutting edge treatments like Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation units (NMES), Blood Flow Restriction machines, and compression therapy to help bridge the gap between rehab and performance for clients. Dry needling, a practice akin to acupuncture, has also gained momentum across Washington State, he says, as an effective way to target myofascial trigger points that reset, restore and realign optimal movement patterns—a service Miller says Engineered Sports is excited to introduce at their performance-rehab facility in the coming year. Washington State recently relaxed a law requiring a doctor’s prescription for dry needling but now it can be received like over-the-counter medication supervised by a physical therapist.
Physical therapists are in demand now, more than ever, Miller tells the EverettPost.com. In the aftermath of the opioid prescription addiction crisis, Miller says there, “Has been a dramatic shift away from pharmacological opioids that can simply mask the pain toward a more functional, movement-based rehab program emphasizing exercise as first-line of care.”
Miller shares, “My personal experience is that more and more of our patients are seeking non-addictive pain resolution over pharmaceutical relief.”
Washington State has been a national leader in expanding direct access that allows patients to be treated by physical therapists without first needing a physician referral.
As a career path, Miller sees physical therapy as bulwark against jobs that could be disrupted by Artificial Intelligence. “I believe a growing number of young people are intentionally seeking out careers that are resilient to AI automation. While AI integration is inevitable across most industries, physical therapy remains fundamentally human. It requires genuine personal connection, hands-on care, and individual empathy to guide patients through injury recovery and back to sports, work or recreational activities.”
Over the past 18 years, Miller and Hamre have built deep local roots, establishing partnerships to treat police, fire and other first responders in Snohomish County, the military, the Everett Silvertips, Everett Community College players, and numerous local high school and club sports teams.
Their clinic even includes a separate space for pediatric physical therapy, the only dedicated pediatric PT space north of Children’s Hospital in Seattle.
Miller and Hamre have taken their considerable experience to the international stage, working with elite and Olympic athletes in China, Korea, and Japan. Also working alongside human performance teams dedicated to Special Operations forces on Department of Defense contracts that Miller describes, “Bringing those world-class insights back home directly fuels how we treat our patients and mentor our staff—ultimately driving a higher standard of care and a better overall experience at Engineered Sports.”
Engineered Sports operates two locations: downtown Everett and north Marysville. Between both sites, the team includes roughly 30 full- and part-time staff members, encompassing Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, Strength Coaches, Exercise Specialists, and administrative support.