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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.

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.

One of our more recent, multi-facility projects brought us to the picturesque Ottawa Valley, just west of Canada’s capital region. Encompassing two school boards in the region, a number of schools have been operating with padding that no longer is deemed safe for use under current guidelines.

This project had us working at five different schools in both the Renfrew County District School Board and within the Renfrew County Catholic District School Board. The schools range in locations scattered throughout the Ottawa Valley starting in Arnprior and working up the line in schools in the Petawawa area.

Sport Systems was commissioned to remove the out-dated existing padding from each of the five schools as the pads no longer met the Ontario Physical and Health Education Association (OPHEA) guidelines. In addition to the removal of the existing padding, the school boards also ordered a number of replacement pads for multiple locations within the schools. The padding installation locations varied from school to school, but the bulk of the padding ordered was for use as protective wall padding in the gymnasiums of the school. The remainder of the padding was designed for use on stages and bleacher seating sections for additional safety for both spectators and participants.

What has been somewhat of a topic of debate for a number of years is the amount of wall padding that is required within gymnasiums and other athletic facilities. Today, there remains no governing body outlining specific standards, but there have been many opinions formed on the subject.

Our recommendation is that there is always up to 10 feet of unobstructed space surrounding a basketball court and that wall padding is installed in high-speed areas such as below basketball goals at a maximum of four feet above the playing surface.

With this in mind, one of our most recent projects had us designing, manufacturing and installing a number of customized wall pads for use in a number of community centres.

The City of Vaughan was the location of this project, situated just north of Toronto with a population of over 320,000 people. The municipality encompasses the communities of Concord, Kleinburg, Maple, Thornhill and Woodbridge and was officially incorporated as a city in 1991. The city put this project out to tender which Sport Systems successfully secured, and then got to work designing the perfect padding systems for their community centres.

With the rapid expansion of trampoline parks across North America, we have added an additional arm to our padding business. What was once a group of a few hobbyists, is now a complete industry with many markets offering multiple locations of trampoline parks.

Traditional features of these parks are large indoor spaces with wall-to-wall trampolines for users of all ages to enjoy. These facilities range in size and can be anywhere from 10,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet, allowing users to jump, twist and flip in a controlled environment.

Our most recent project came to us from Emerald Park, Saskatchewan, home of Boomers Air Park. The facility measures over 12,500 square feet and features floor trampolines, wall trampolines, foam pits, light shows and a fantastic sound system designed to provide their clientele with a healthy form of fun. After your bouncing session, take a break in the park’s food court or lounge area adorned with big screen TV’s for your enjoyment.

As the summer months came to an end, our fall season immediately kicked into gear. While we are still completing the last few large-scale outdoor projects, we now begin to see more indoor-focused purchases such as basketball equipment, volleyball systems and a variety of wall and custom padding projects.

Our most recent project came to us out of the beautiful province of Quebec in historic Montreal. One of the city’s most prominent rehabilitation centres was in the market for some very specialized wall padding for a particular room in one of its many locations around the city.

The client was Le Centre de Réadaptation en Déficience Intellectuelle et en Troubles Envahissants du Développement de Montréal (CRDITED). An institution in the health and social services network, CRDITED provides specialized services for adaptation and rehabilitation for over 4500 people with intellectual disabilities and with autism spectrum disorder.

In addition to traditional fitness applications such as training facilities and gymnasiums, a large portion of our custom padding department is dedicated to the production of fully padded rooms for a variety of different uses. While each padded room comes with different application requirements, the majority are used as a safety precaution in hospitals and health facilities or simply for providing relaxation, comfort or to heighten the senses.

As of late, we have been involved in projects aiming to design and build Snoezelen multi-sensory environments for clients around the globe. Here are some of the basics surrounding these popular sensory-focused padded rooms:

What is Snoezelen Multi-Sensory Environment?

This concept was actually designed by a pair of Dutch therapists in the late 1970’s who were working at a local centre for people experiencing intellectual disabilities. These therapists eventually would create an environment for their patients that would excite the senses and prove to be quite beneficial to their early subjects.

One of our busiest departments is our padding department. We receive thousands of inquiries, questions and requests for custom padding designs and solutions each year. As one can very well imagine, this portion of our business has expanded well beyond the traditional athletic applications such as gymnasiums and athletic floor mats. Today, we proudly equip a wide variety of organizations and facilities with highly detailed and highly customized padding solutions, where no two projects are ever the same.

Aside from the traditional applications, we design and create custom padded room designs for use in treatment centres and healthcare facilities such as hospitals. We provide many of our commercial and industrial clientele with strategically placed wall, column and frame padding to keep employees safe and also offer a padding line specifically designed for use with veterinary facilities, keeping staff and animals safe during their visits.

One of the more recent additions to our growing product offering is that of our custom padding solutions, designed specifically for animal hospitals, farms and veterinary clinics. With our team of designers and full-service padding manufacturing capabilities, this became a natural pivot to our business, providing animal health facilities with a wide array of custom padding solutions to fit their unique needs.

Our most recent project was commissioned by the Lloydminster Animal Hospital in Lloydminster, Alberta. Specializing in companion and food-production animal species, this animal hospital offers a range of services to its diverse clientele, including: diagnostic modalities including in-hospital laboratory, digital x-rays, ultrasound, and fiber optic endoscopy.

The hospital was looking for customized padding for their post-surgery recovery stalls used to house horses. While circumstances differ with each patient, horses are in need of proper padding and stall comfort, particularly after the use of any anesthesia as the recovery stage can be a potentially dangerous time for large animals in particular.

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.