The Best Seats
In The House

Over the past 10 or so years, we have seen a dramatic increase in both demand and therefore, price paid for raw metals. A direct result of this is a paired increase in the number of thieves targeting athletic facilities, high schools, universities, colleges and public park properties for their rows upon rows of aluminum.

Bleachers are not among the only targets of these fly-by-night thieves, there have also been various thefts of player’s benches, aluminum tables and a number of other metal-based products left outdoors.

Given the size of some of these structures, removing them and preparing them for a scrap metal buyer is no easy feat. These criminals are extremely organized in choosing their targets and executing the removal of these bleacher systems as quickly as possible. Most crimes occur during the night-time hours and often require a number of individuals with the right tools and transportation to pull off the heist.

The Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) has been Canada’s largest granting foundation for over thirty years. This foundation has grown by standing behind its mission of strategic investments in community-based initiatives throughout the province of Ontario.

Each year the OTF awards over $110 million dollars to approximately 1300 not for profit and charitable organizations, while they receive around 3000 total applicants per year.

In its quest to bring real changes that truly make a difference to communities in Ontario, the OTF has identified six Action Areas to use to identify and fund its investments. Each and every grant applicant pledges to make a difference and only those who satisfy one of the action areas are considered. The action areas are as follows:

• Inspired People
• Connected People
• Active People
• Prosperous People
• Promising Young People
• Green People

High school gymnasiums are high traffic areas and facility managers are always looking for ways to make them more efficient and prevent damage to non-athletic appliances and equipment while the area is in use. As multi-sport environments, gymnasiums in high schools serve numerous purposes, host a variety of athletic events and are used by a variety of age groups. For this reason, a large portion of our business serving educational institutions involves highly customized solutions to either fit certain areas or to protect equipment and participants.

As we’ve mentioned many times before, our custom padding department is our most versatile and customized product line, as almost daily we receive requests for unique padding configurations covering everything from customized gym wall padding to fully padded rooms.

One of our most recent design, fabrication and installation of custom padding projects was requested by the Arnprior District High School, not too far from our home base here in Eastern Ontario.

With spring officially in full swing and summer fast approaching many athletic departments and organizations have already made the transition into preparing for the upcoming outdoor sport season. This can lead to a great deal of planning and research, particularly for larger institutions such as universities and colleges who feature large and diverse athletic departments.

As a premier manufacturer and supplier of athletic equipment and infrastructure, we supply the industry’s best equipment and solutions to a wide variety of sports. Our business expands far beyond simply servicing the more popular sports of basketball, baseball, football and soccer. We also carry a wide variety of equipment for lacrosse, rugby, badminton, tennis and field hockey.

A little known fact is that the sport of field hockey remains one of the world’s most popular sports, currently being played worldwide by an estimated 3 million people. The game has evolved over its approximate 4000 year history and today is played within some of the biggest facilities and programs in the world.

To answer this call, we carry the very best in field hockey g

As we progress into the spring and summer months, our scope of work transitions into one of the larger parts of our business; full-scale bleacher seating systems and grandstands. These structures are a beautiful sight at any football or sports field or stadium and look even better with throngs of fans cheering on the home team.

One of our first outdoor bleacher projects of the season was the design, manufacturing and installation of a large bleacher grandstand and stand-alone press box for St. Joseph Scollard Hall Secondary School, part of the Nipissing-Parry Sound Catholic District School Board.

The school was looking to acquire seating to accommodate around 500 spectators with press box for use with upcoming athletic events to be held at the school.

When we were awarded the job, our design team quickly got to work designing and manufacturing what would be two 10-tier and 40’ long banks of elevated bleachers and one bank of 3-tier 16’ long non-elevated bleachers which would end up seating approximately 510 spectators.

Wall-mounted basketball systems, which includes backboards, rims and nets, is one of the most popular configurations of basketball goals we sell, service and install. With a variety of designs, these basketball goals are a favourite for indoor and outdoor facilities that often serve as multi-sport or multi-use locations, serving a number of different needs.

This is a department that certainly has evolved over the years as we have been faced with some interesting mounting challenges from many different customers. As no two facilities are exactly alike, we often turn to our in-house design team to creatively draft innovative configurations as needed.

Today we offer four main configurations which seem to cover most of the needs of our diverse clientele, but we are proud to customize any project when the need arises.

Here are our four basic configurations for wall-mounted basketball systems:

Our netting department is one of our most versatile product lines, with applications across a number of sports and general uses.

While we carry traditional sports netting such as hockey goal netting, soccer goal netting, volleyball netting and the like, we also provide our customers with completely customized barrier netting solutions. Our barrier netting solutions are also used in many sports applications, to reduce the risk of flying objects and protecting spectators and equipment.

Enclosing areas such as hockey rinks, tennis courts, golf driving ranges and fairways and baseball fields are a few of the most popular types of netting we design and install. This being said, there is never a one size fits all approach to netting as the barrier needs vary from sport to sport. To remedy this we carry three main varieties of netting, each designed to fulfill certain requirements for a particular application or sport.

Located just a couple miles north of Trenton, Ontario, lies the Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Trenton, operating primarily as an air force base by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Opened in 1931, CFB Trenton is now a major hub for tactical and strategic airlift aircraft and a major training institution. The base is home to the Canadian Forces Land Advanced Warfare Centre (CFLAWC), formerly known as the Canadian Parachute Centre (CPC) and the Canadian Army Advanced Warfare Centre (CAAWC).

The CFLAWC is now known as the “Centre of Excellence”, embodying thirteen different parachuting courses, including aerial delivery, mountain operations, rappelling, patrol pathfinder and all parachute rigger qualifications.  

As with most businesses operating today, we live in an ever-changing space that moves quickly. Our product line which, originally was created to service athletic and sports-themed facilities and operations, has now evolved into so much more.

While athletics is still a very large part of our business, we are always seeking to enter additional markets and we continue to test our products across various applications to better serve our growing clientele.

With innovative designers  and the technology already in place within our organization, we can easily pivot and take on non-traditional padding projects and make our customers’ visions a reality. We have recently expanded our custom padding services to design, manufacture and install customized padding for veterinary facilities and other animal shelter-type facilities.

As with any equipment or technology, after any given number of years of repeated use it can either become worn out, out of date, obsolete or downright unsafe. Gym dividers and partitions that are out of date can quickly become an area of concern for facility managers and operators, and maintenance or replacement should be considered as your divider or partition gets older.

This was true of our latest project we completed for Holy Trinity High School in the Ottawa Catholic School Board. We were commissioned to remove and dispose of their existing folding partition and supply and install a new state-of-the-art gym divider curtain for the local high school.

Our team quickly and safely removed the old partition and began preparing the space for the new divider curtain to be installed. Once the removal was completed, we were to supply and install our highly-popular top roll gym divider curtain, with a touch of customization.