The Best Seats
In The House

As we work our way into the month of July, our installation team remains busy with on-site visits and unique installations of athletic infrastructure across the country. Given the busy sport seasons that begin in the spring and start or extend through the summer months and into the fall, our team is firing on all cylinders.

We were commissioned recently by Life Time Athletic to complete a large project that was to span across two phases of work for their gymnasium. The first phase involved the design, supply and installation of basketball backstops, followed by the second phase that consisted of fire-resistant wall padding to be custom fit to the unique design of the gymnasium.

While the excitement of your facility’s sporting events might keep your spectators on the edge of their seats, many owners and operators value the quality and function of those very seats that house their rowdy crowds.

Our fixed arena and stadium seating solutions aim to satisfy those needs along with enhancing the experience of game day for your fan base. This being said, today many arenas and stadiums today are built to satisfy more than just the needs of local sports teams. They are also used to serve a variety of other applications such as concerts, children’s performances and a variety of other special events. With this in mind, many facility managers and planners have a keen eye for detail and function when it comes to selecting fixed seating.

Outdoor sports equipment and infrastructure such as bleachers are exposed to a variety of different weather conditions and over time require maintenance or eventual replacement. As this school year comes to a close and with a new one just around the corner, Woodroffe High School of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, commissioned us to remove their existing combination soccer and football goal posts and replace them with a new product.

Our combination football and soccer goals are a popular choice among educational facilities and municipalities where multi-use fields are present. These combination goals allow a permanent fixture that satisfies the needs of two separate sports and are built to endure the toughest weather conditions.

These goals consist of an 8’ x 24’ soccer goal opening with solid 4” square tubing forming the frame of the goal. A two-piece cross bar and the 20’ high football uprights are constructed using 2” square tubing and the unit is completely sandblasted and powder coated white for a chip-resistant finish.

Our humble roots have been cemented over the past 35 years in Almonte, Ontario, a small town just outside of Canada’s capital city of Ottawa. Over those years we have watched the town around us grow in unison with our company. We began by selling basketball rims in the birthplace of basketball’s inventor, James Naismith, and have since expanded into serving institutions such as municipalities, colleges, universities and other educational facilities with the very best in sports infrastructure and equipment.

Presently we distribute service and manufacture everything from basketball rims and bleachers to gym divider curtains and gymnastic mats to our clientele not just here in Canada, but around the world. We began, by servicing local clients primarily and quickly expanded into supplying much of Canada and the United States with the very best equipment and customized solutions for educational and sporting facilities.

Today, our business continues to grow outside the confines of North America. Over the past year or two, we have received orders from a variety of international clients, with a great deal of them coming from the Middle East.

With the cold winter months behind us, municipal parks and recreation planners are getting busy designing new city parks and revamping existing parks which might be in need of a facelift. Parks and pathways play a big role in enhancing the quality of life for residents, giving them additional motivation to get themselves and their families outdoors and active in their own community.

Recently, the City of Ottawa announced the development of two city parks situated in the west-end of the city. In the Kanata suburb of Ottawa, parks planners began with Arcadia Park, providing local residents with playgrounds, a soccer field, winter ice rink and beautifully landscaped seating areas.

At little further west, the quaint village of Carp spent much of 2014 planning the development of Green Meadows Park. The park now includes junior and senior playgrounds, seating areas, pathways, a winter puddle rink, and a standard-sized basketball court. The development of this park was focused on the youth in the community, and planners hope the addition of the basketball court will satisfy that need.

For performing arts and educational seating clientele, the demand for a comfortable, yet aesthetically pleasing fixed seat can’t be ignored. With students and theatre lovers logging hours on end in these seats, functionality is a chief concern.

With this in mind, we carry a select offering of fixed seating products specifically designed for auditorium and theatrical use, withstanding the wear and tear often associated with high-traffic seating locations, while also offering a beautiful chair to enhance your facility.

As July quickly approaches, the city of Toronto waits in anticipation for the kick-off of the first international multi-sport event to be held within the province of Ontario in over 85 years. The Pan Am Games are scheduled to take place beginning July 10, 2015, when approximately 7000 athletes will compete in 36 individual sports.

As one can imagine, the preparation for this type of event must begin well in advance and be carefully planned and executed. In the fall of 2014, we were commissioned to design and install retractable barrier netting to be used by the games on the campus of the University of Toronto.

Following the successful completion of this netting project, Sport Systems was once again commissioned by organizers of the games to design and fabricate some intricately customized bleacher seating for the Pan Am Athletic Stadium housed at York University.

When planning any large-scale event, seating is typically a chief concern, especially regarding sporting events. With legions of fans and spectators set to descend upon the city of Toronto this summer, organizers had to ensure they could seat the masses at each and every event location. What made this bleacher seating project so unique was the fact that the seating was to be designed so that it could be installed on the 5^th level or roof deck of the stadium.

Gymnasium flooring is a large investment and as facility operators and managers, we want to protect and maintain our flooring as much as possible to extend its lifecycle. While most of our gym floor covers provide more than adequate protection for gyms hosting special events, dances and assemblies, there are a wide variety of other exercises used in gyms around the world that are in need of a more customized solution to protecting their investment.

In the spring of 2014 the Canadian Armed Forces approached us to design and fabricate a solution for use in tandem with some of their mandatory training exercises. As part of a new fitness standards program, one exercise requires participants to drag and pull multiple sandbags for over 20 meters. Over time, the gym floor in the training facility suffered major damage as a result of this exercise.

In the fall of 2014, we successfully completed an arena bleacher project with our partners at Omni Sport for the Village of Rycroft, Alberta. Shortly following the successful installation of both bleachers and new rink boards for the hockey rink, we partnered up with the team at Omni Sport once again to design, build and install a large-scale grandstand bleacher project in Frog Lake, Alberta.

Given the size of the entire project, it will be broken up into three separate phases, which will be detailed here on our blog as it is completed. The first phase of this job was to design, fabricate and deliver a customized arena grandstand seating structure for use inside an arena.

The project called for a clear-span beam-styled design featuring a fully galvanized steel I-beam under structure. This type of configuration is often found in many grandstand bleacher systems, both indoors and outdoors, to allow for usable space underneath the bleachers. Many facilities will place concessions, storage areas and/or bathrooms under their bleacher structures to fully maximize the space. In this particular case, the existing change rooms would be housed beneath the bleacher structure with some additional area to be used for storage by the facility as well.

We’ve all seen them on national sports broadcasts, celebrities lining the sidelines of professional basketball games with what appear to be the best seats in the house. While these premium seats provide athletes and celebrities with an exciting close-up courtside experience, they also serve a variety of purposes for athletic facilities and programs.

Portable chairs used for courtside seating are a very versatile investment. Their lightweight and sturdy structure allows them to be moved around easily and can withstand the weight of large athletes. These chairs are constructed on an 18 gauge steel frame accompanied by heavy-duty metal linking brackets and rear steel cross-braces for the ultimate in support.

In addition to their sturdy construction, our courtside seats are covered in 40 oz. vinyl, one of the most durable vinyl on the market today. This vinyl can withstand constant use and makes these chairs very easy to maintain and clean. As far as protecting your gym flooring from scratches, marking and dents, our courtside seats come complete with non-marring foot inserts to ensure your flooring does not endure any unnecessary damage.