The Best Seats
In The House

Removing the barriers experienced by children with physical and mental disabilities was the goal when the Miracle League first started in April of 2000 in the state of Georgia. The idea behind this incredible organization has spread like wild fire and now consists of over 240 Miracle League Organizations serving over 200 000 children and adults who might not otherwise have the opportunity to play the game of baseball.

The Miracle League brings a unique angle to the traditional game of baseball that allows participants to blossom, not only as players, but as individuals. The proven ‘buddy’ system the league employs pairs each disabled player with an able-bodied player and fosters new friendships, skills and tremendous confidence in all who participate.

In the summer of 2012, a local Ottawa family approached both the Champions for Ottawa Baseball and the Orleans Rotary Club with expressed interest in bringing a Miracle League to Ottawa to support their son Bryce’s love of baseball. Bryce, who was born with cerebral palsy, wanted dearly to partake in a baseball league and his parents, Rolly and Michelle Desrochers, set out to make his dream a reality.

The sports equipment and infrastructure business is growing at a rapid pace with help from the development of new programming at educational, athletic and municipal organizations around the world. Technology has aided in this expansion as well, allowing companies like ours to build our truly customizable products and solutions for our end users.

We have spent over 35 years fine-tuning our business and growing it across North America and around the world. Over the course of the past two years, Sport Systems has been named to PROFIT magazine’s list of fastest growing companies in Canada.

Achieving this type of growth is not exclusive to our management’s growth strategy or expanding product lines. Rather, the growth in our company comes from years upon years of providing our customers and clientele with premium-quality products, customized solutions using state-of-the-art technology and most importantly, the very best in customer service and experience.

The 2015 Pan Am Games kicked off last week with great success on July 10, 2015. Three days into this fierce international competition, the host country, Canada is atop the medal count, closely followed by our neighbours to the south, the United States of America.

Having only been played on Canadian soil twice before, the return of the Pan Am Games offers sports fans a great glimpse into international sporting competition as the Games play host to 41 member nations competing in over 36 Pan Am sports.

In the fall of 2014 we began to install barrier netting at multiple sites on campus at the University of Toronto for test events leading up to the kickoff of the games this summer. Our team recently returned to Toronto, adding netting barriers to the grass playing fields at the University.

It was a hot night of racing at “Canada’s Toughest 1/3 Mile”, the historic Peterborough Speedway, as fans were treated to a full program of racing which included appearances by Ontario Mini Stocks, Renegade Trucks and Earl Ireland Auto Sales Late Models, the INEX Ontario Legends and Ontario Modifieds. 

Gould, a Ministock star from Capital City Speedway in Ottawa, decided to try his luck in central Ontario by hauling the Sport Systems Canada Inc. (SSCI) Mopar Ministock down Highway 7 to take on the locals at Peterborough and notched a 3^rd place finish in the first heat and a 4^th place finish in the 2^nd heat. 

It’s no secret; bleachers are a big part of our business and when it comes to true versatility, our telescopic and retractable bleachers cannot be beat. These indoor bleachers are typically found in gymnasiums, particularly in educational institutions that require a gym space that can accommodate multi-sport use, a variety of different events and spectator seating.

Our telescopic bleachers answer the call with their uniquely engineered ability to retract when not in use and provide valuable floor space to participants and program operators. While each gymnasium and space is different, these bleacher units are completely customizable and our design team ensures each bank of seating we install is just the right fit.

Our recent project for the Ecole Secondaire Macdonald Cartier in Sudbury, Ontario, featured an educational facility that was already reaping the rewards of a retractable bleacher system, but had since grown to require a slightly larger seating capacity.

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.