The Best Seats
In The House

Currently in the United States there are an estimated 24,000,000 people who play soccer in one level or another.  This statistic has increased to the tune of roughly 89 percent since 1990, and in 2015 soccer was rated more popular to watch on television than ice hockey, auto racing, tennis and golf.

In light of this growth, youth soccer programs in the United States and Canada have exploded over the past years.  What was once a sport played by young players on worn out fields is quickly becoming a premier pastime in North American society. 

One of our most recent projects brought us to beautiful Greensboro, North Carolina, the home of Pitt Community College.  The college, established in 1961, now awards associate degrees, diplomas and certificates for more than 60 programs, serving more than 23,000 credit and non-credit students each and every year.  The college is currently the seventh largest in the 58-member North Carolina Community College System and is home to the Pitt Community College Bulldogs, who are represented with athletic programming in baseball, men’s basketball, softball and women’s volleyball.

                               Bleachers Before Retrofit                                                        Bleachers After Retrofit

As any athletic facility owner or operator knows, specific needs and requirements can sometimes change like the weather.  With growing programs, fan bases and participants, equipment purchased in the past can often require expansion or upgrading as your program progresses.

Keeping up with these changes along with having the ability to pivot and scale quickly can make or break a growing program.  With that in mind, a large portion of our business is dedicated to designing structures such as bleacher seating systems that can undergo relatively painless retrofits, giving operators the ability to grow, without the pain.

We all love the roar of the crowd while taking in a football game, or the rush we get while watching players blaze down a basketball court.  The sensations that sports illicit in both spectators and participants can sometimes make us forget about everything that went into the design and production of the courts, bleachers and other athletic products used on a daily basis.

Before these products hit the floor of any gymnasium or grace the sidelines of any football field or soccer pitch, they oftentimes have gone through years of research and development.  While technological and design elements are forever changing, making our lives easier, safety is still the top priority for equipment and infrastructure manufacturers like us and the customers we serve.

Photo: Our installation team lowering a customized press box atop a grandstand bleacher at Millennium Park

We’ve all been treated to the sight of a large-scale grandstand bleacher rising from an athletic field waiting to be filled with throngs of avid fans eagerly waiting to support their favourite team.  While these structures alone give us a warm and fuzzy feeling inside, nothing completes these marvellously engineered structures quite like a press box affixed to the upper portion of the stands. 

In addition to giving fans a comfortable seat and great vantage point for viewing their favourite sporting events, bleachers completed with a press box give timekeepers, staff and members of the press a hub from which they can operate. 

Founded in 2009, Fieldhouse Athletics and the Fieldhouse Pirates Baseball Club is a premier high-performance baseball development program located in Canada for U.S. college-bound baseball players.

Offering players access to year-round development and training from experienced coaches, the program fields 13U, 14U, 16U and 18U baseball teams and will soon be the first Ontario-based club to field 10U and 11U teams as well.

Their state-of-the-art training facility is where baseball dreams come true.  Inside, players make use of the MLB spec clay pitching mound, pitching machine tunnels, laser-timed 60-yard dash area, long-toss throwing lanes and a 5-toll video analysis centre.

Selecting a basketball rim for your organization might seem like a simple enough task and for most purchasers, it definitely can be a painless process.  In some cases however, there are definite challenges and factors to take into consideration when you begin shopping for the right rim, including the many configurations to choose from.

The expected use and location are perhaps the two biggest factors to consider and can literally make or break your basketball program, whether it is academic, recreational or professional.

The only true constant factor with regards to basketball rims is their size.  They all measure 18” in diameter and measure consistently from all point-to-point measurements that cross the exact centre of the hoop.  In addition to the diameter of the hoop, there should be 6 inches of separation from the ring to the basket and when attached to a backboard, should have no separation.

Kanata Lasers with team bus at provincial championships

We are the product of a locally-founded and homegrown success story and as such we do all we can to give back and support local causes and organizations where and when possible.

As part of our proud Canadian heritage, hockey is naturally a big part of who we are.  Not only do we specialize in supplying hockey leagues and teams across Canada and the United States with hockey goals, barrier netting and padding, we support the game on a local level as well.

Fresh off an outstanding season and championing the HEO AAA league, the Kanata Lasers AAA Midget hockey team was looking for support as they embarked on their final goal of the season: a shot at the Ontario Provincial Championships earlier in the month of April. 

In an effort to bring more excitement to the game of basketball in the 1940’s and 1950’s, the National Basketball Association (NBA) introduced a shot clock in 1954.  Prior to the shot clock’s inception, the league had various problems attracting fans; perhaps the biggest being low-scoring games with far too many fouls.  These rules crippled the game with bored fans in the stands.

In an effort to revitalize the game, the team in possession was given 24 seconds to attempt a shot or lose possession of the ball. The league also added a rule limiting the number of fouls in a quarter;  both changes complimenting the shot clock perfectly.  Each foul outside of the allowable limit became a shooting foul, permanently changing the game for the better.

While we do complete a large portion of projects designed solely for athletic use for municipalities, educational and private institutions, our reach is much broader than that. In addition to our work we traditionally complete within the athletic industry, another large portion of our business is the design and manufacture of padding and other safety solutions for commercial applications.

Our most recent project brought us to the state of New York where a global company was in need of some custom-designed padding solutions for use at the commercial location.  This company specializes in the engineering, design and manufacturing of high precision mechanical components, assemblies, gears and motion control solutions.  Their global reach includes some of the most recognizable names in the medical, aerospace and industrial markets.