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With snow flurries in the forecast, winter is upon us (most of us anyways) and with that comes the busy season in hockey rinks and ice surfaces across Canada and the United States.

As the fastest game on ice, hockey is also considered to be one of the most high-impact sports on the planet and with good reason.  In addition to quick-moving skaters and errant hockey sticks, the game is centred on a gliding puck that at times, can be travelling at over 100 miles per hour.

While the majority of hockey rinks are equipped with boards and proper spectator protection using heavy-duty glass, the risk of spectator injury in the game is still rising due to deflected pucks.  With up to 12 sticks being on the ice at any time, the risk for a deflected puck to clear the boards and head into the crowd was and is still, very high.  In fact, it was not until 2002 that the National Hockey League finally made a ruling stating that all ice surfaces were to be equipped with additional netting surrounding both goals above the height of the glass.

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.

With spring just around the corner, municipalities and athletic complexes are beginning to evaluate the conditions of their outdoor fields. As the snow melts, organizers and operators will promptly begin running through their checklists in preparation for the busy spring/summer athletic season.

With many fields, particularly those operated by municipalities across Canada and the United States being utilized as multi-purpose athletic fields, the need for effective and safe netting is a top priority. While some fields may be in need of securing new netting backstops or perimeters for their fields, others might simply need to assess the condition of their current netting on site. Harsh winters and continued exposure to the elements can cause the netting to wear over time, so a quick evaluation of the condition of all netting each spring is a vital exercise in safety.

For those looking for partial protection or boundary netting requirements, we proudly carry a number of solutions, each that can be tailored to the unique needs of any athletic field. For sports such as soccer, a secure and reliable netting backstop is often necessary for keeping balls in play and reducing the amount of time wasted by players, coaches and organizers chasing stray balls.

A new and rapidly growing sport has just touched down in Canada’s capital region as Archery Games recently opened Ottawa’s very first Archery Tag location. Archery Tag is a sport that resembles dodge ball, but without the balls. In this intense game, participants are equipped with bows and patented foam-tipped arrows.

Two teams are separated by a ‘safe zone’ and are equipped with specialized targets. Each team battles to tag opponents with their arrows and also knock out the five discs that make up the opposing team’s target. Much like dodge ball, players are eliminated once tagged with an opposing arrow, but are eligible for return when a target spot is knocked out or when one of their teammates is able to catch an opposing team’s arrow.

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.

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.

We were recently commission by the Boys & Girls Club of Kingston and Area to successfully renovate a new facility they recently acquired. What was once a workout facility is now home to the Boys & Girls Club, a facility that aims to provide a safe, supportive place where children and youth can experience new opportunities, overcome barriers, build positive relationships and develop confidence and skills for life. 

Converting the existing facility to a new Boys & Girls Club obviously came with a variety of alterations and required a number of products to properly separate the space into the needed areas to support the ongoing user groups and events often held at Boys & Girls Clubs.

When the games come to Toronto next summer, it will mark only the third time this event has been held on Canadian soil, with Winnipeg, Manitoba being the only other host city in the country. Both the Pan Am & Parapan Games are held every four years, always preceding the Olympic and Paralympic Summer Games.

With the start of the 2015 games approaching in less than a year, the organizing committee, project managers and volunteers are busy preparing sites in and around the Greater Toronto Area, anxiously awaiting the start of the games, set to kickoff on July 10^th, 2015.

As part of the development of multiple sites across Toronto, Sport Systems’ expertise was called upon to design, build and install a custom, retractable barrier netting solution to serve as a barrier around the perimeter of the Field Hockey venue located on the campus of the University of Toronto.

This spring, the Town of Collingwood, Ontario was looking to partner with a company that could provide them with a netting barrier to keep spectators and park users safe from stray baseballs. The project was much more than netting in itself, and required a firm that could supply the netting, design and installation ideally prior to the start of the 2014 baseball season.

The Town of Collingwood ultimately turned to Sport Systems, given their experience and track record with installing complex barrier netting projects for both sporting and commercial applications.