If you ask Ralph Rogers what he’ll miss most when he closes his business, Team Sports, at the end of the month, it doesn’t take him long to answer.

“The customers,” Rogers said. “The people have been so great. I’ve had fathers bring in their kids for stuff who I’ve known since they were kids themselves. Their fathers brought them here, way back when.”

Rogers has owned and operated Team Sports in East Bremerton for 27 years. And, although he’s quite a sports fan, he never intended to open a sporting goods store. It was after a career in the U.S. Navy that Rogers settled in Bremerton and bought an embroidery shop formerly known as J&J Embroidery. That shop, in Brownsville, had been in business since 1964. Soon, Rogers found himself doing screen printing uniforms and t-shirts for many own the local Little League teams and school teams.

“They’d come in to get their uniforms and the coaches would tell me that they couldn’t find the right balls or bats or socks,” Rogers said. “I’d tell them ‘Let me see if I can get them for you.’

“Pretty soon I was special ordering so much stuff that I thought ‘Why don’t I just open a store?’”

That was 1999. And since, his store has moved several times and at one time, he had a store and two other t-shirt shops. In 2011, the store moved to the Redwood Plaza on Ridell Road just west of the intersection of Highway 303 and Wheaton Way.

“When we moved in here, we thought we had a great location,” he said. “There was so much traffic in and out of this shopping center and lots of walk-in traffic in the store.”

But after Chips casino moved out, and they stopped giving driver’s license tests at the Washington State Department Of Licensing office in the shopping center, walk-in customers dried up.

It’s been that and the amount of business he’s lost to online stores that’s caused Rogers to decide to close the business. Many of the school teams in the area now buy their uniforms and supplies directly from Nike, Rogers said, and this year, the local Little League teams bought their uniforms online.

“We didn’t even do one Little League team this year,” he said.

While the business made it through tough economic times during the past five year, his sales have gone from $1 million a year to $300,000. He once had 13 employees and now has just three.

One of those employees is his son, Matthew, who plans to open a new store called 360 Disc Golf at 4217 Wheaton Way. That shop will carry everything for disc golf, shirts and sweatshirts with the logos of local high schools, and all the local pro sports teams shirts.

As for the made-to-order embroidery and screen printing, Matthew plans to keep that, too.

“He’s got that set up at his house right now,” the elder Rogers said. “It will go in the new place.”

Rogers said one of the reasons why he tried so hard to keep the business going was that he hoped to pass it on to one of his children.

“All four of my kids worked in the business,” he said. “Those are some of my best memories of having the business. But Matthew is the only one who’s really had any interest in it and I’m glad he’s doing what he’s doing — opening a new business that has great prospects.”

Although Rogers is ready to take it easy, he does plan to help his son in the new store.

“I want to be there to help until he gets his feet on the ground,” Rogers said.

But Rogers won’t be in need of things to do to keep him busy. He’s active in Rotary and he’s in his 17th year as a commissioner for the Central Kitsap Fire & Rescue District. He started with the district as a volunteer firefighter 37 years ago.

Rogers wife, Sandra, will mark 30 years with the Central Kitsap School District in 2015, and he hopes to be able to talk her into retiring so they can spend some time together.

One thing, however, he said he won’t be watching more sports than he does now.

“I don’t think that’s possible,” he said. “I watch two games on Sunday and during baseball season, there’s a game every day.”

Besides the Seahawks and the Mariners, he’s a Dallas Cowboys fan.

“I grew up in Texas,” he said. “I got to be for the Cowboys.”

As for himself,  he played a bit of football back in high school for the Ysleta High School in El Paso. His letter jacket hangs on the store wall.

He’s not sure if that will get moved to his son’s new store. But there are a couple of “things” that will go. One is a yellow lazy older border collie and lab mix named Siskiyou. The other is a brown Rhodesian mix named Chewy.

“That dog is Matthew’s shadow,” Rogers said, of Chewy. “He’s right there where ever Matthew goes.”

The going-out-of business-sale will continue through Nov. 30 at 1550 N.E. Riddell Rd., Suite 110.