The Best Seats
In The House

If you were lucky enough to have access to a time machine, you could head to almost any school across North America and you’d likely find a set of removable wall pads in the facility’s gymnasium. 

At the time, it was a great choice. Teachers and staff were convinced that giving students the ability to remove their own gym mats for use in gym class was a fine idea. And it was.

To a point.

The truth is, there are some facilities that still use removable padding on their walls. We manufacture and sell it ourselves, so we know it does still have a limited use out there in the market. In some cases, this solution is exactly what facility operators are looking for, depending on the specific programming that school or facility provides.

If you’ve followed us for a while now, you would know of our long-standing relationship with the good people at Boys and Girls Clubs across North America. We’ve helped a number of clubs get set up for athletic play in their gymnasiums, providing them with new padding solutions, basketball systems, gym dividers and much more.

Given our proximity to the Nation’s Capital here in Canada, we especially take pride in servicing our local clubs with new equipment and solutions whenever the need arises. Having a strong relationship with our local clubs, we’re proud to participate in improvements whenever they reach out to our team.

As the need for highly-specialized padded rooms continues to grow, so too does our custom padding department. Working once again with our partners at King Carpentry - with whom we’ve done many of these rooms - our latest project brought us to the picturesque St. Lawrence Seaway.

A call was placed from a high school in the area who saw our work in a neighbouring school and was looking to replicate the work. With a growing number of students in need of a safe and calming space to facilitate de-escalation and relaxation we were once again called to design and install a fire-rated safe room.

In a perfect world, every gymnasium would be identical, making producing the equipment and padding required for these facilities a breeze. What makes our work so fun and meaningful however, lies in the fact that this is not the case in any facility. 

Having worked with thousands of gymnasiums, schools, community centres and post-secondary institutions around the world, we know that no two facilities or projects are alike. Although we love the variety working in this industry provides us, we’ve also grown to have a unique affinity for customized projects. Whether it’s a new set of grandstands for a university, a new basketball system for a community centre or completing a unique padding project, we love taking on a challenge and watching the solution come to fruition.

Since it was established in the 1980s, Dovercourt Recreation has been a staple in serving the National Capital Region with recreational programming for children and community members. In addition to their overall goal of building a healthy, active and engaged community through recreation, it is Eastern Ontario’s first HIGH FIVE accredited organizations.

Currently run by the Dovercourt Recreation Association as part of the City of Ottawa’s recreational programming, representatives from the city reached out to our team with concern about some of the equipment located at the Dovercourt complex.

With the rise in mental health awareness, we welcome opportunities to participate in projects that foster such development. For one of our recent projects, we were proud to have been invited to lead a project at Canada’s largest research facility for mental health and addictions.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) is the result of an amalgamation of four separate facilities - the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, the Addiction Research Foundation, and the Donwood Institute. 

Having completed a number of projects in the beautiful state of Nebraska, we returned for another job, this time  in the state’s Capital city of Lincoln. Originally named Landcaster, the city was renamed in 1869 after the great President Abraham Lincoln. In that same year, the University of Nebraska was established in Lincoln and today remains the largest university in the state, serving nearly 30,000 students.

Our partners at Crouch Recreation in Omaha, brought us yet another opportunity in the Cornhusker State, this time at an established Christian school in neighbouring Lincoln. With a history dating back to the 1950s, Lincoln Christian School has been serving local families and the community with faith-based education for decades, currently boasting nearly 900 students and over 80 faculty members.

Our custom padding department recently answered the call for another unusual and highly customized padding job.  We were approached by Crestwood High School in Peterborough, Ontario to design some padding as part of some recent renovations to the gymnasium.

Serving as home to the Mustangs, the school began a list of renovations which included some brand-new storage units that would allow for additional athletic equipment to be stored when not in use. Because these units run along the edge of the sports court they required the installation of safety padding to protect student athletes.

Recreation centres provide community members with access to a variety of resources. With intentional efforts made to promote inclusivity, programming can range from bingo for the elderly
to after-school programs for children and swimming facilities for families. However, catering to a diverse community also presents challenges. For individuals with physical, cognitive, or behavioural challenges, these centres must also provide properly trained staff and additional accommodations in their buildings. With organizations such as the Dovercourt Recreation Centre, special attention has been placed on meeting the needs of those experiencing behavioural difficulties. To address the centre’s goal, our team was brought in to provide a safe “calming space” for their facility.

Oftentimes, Sport Systems is approached by clients for a variety of reasons. While new equipment is often requested to replace old or damaged items, there are scenarios in which the update is needed for rebranding purposes. Contacting our team for the latter reason, Central Hastings School determined that new stage and wall padding was in order to help accommodate the transition that the school was undergoing.