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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Winter Practice
by Dave
Monday, November 14, 2005
 If you're reading this from a place where winter means the temperature dips all the way down to 50 degrees in the middle of the night but by the time you leave your house it's usually around 65, please leave. I hate you. I'm just joking. I like my winters at least somewhat white and cold. But this is a softball blog and if you have weather that allows you to play and practice year round, you are lucky. For the rest of us, we have to improvise or risk being mauled by our friends from warmer climates come spring.
There are indoor batting cages here and there across the fruited plain but these are small, crowded, typically do not provide a lot of instruction and can even be fairly inconvenient. Our travel team has an indoor hall which is very small and really only suitable for pitching practice for a few girls at a time. I am extremely lucky to have a basement which is big enough for pitching practice. Some of you probably are on teams which pay for access to local high school gymnasiums. But aside from this, I recently found a place which is well suited to winter practice. It is called Frozen Ropes and you can find locations through the organizations corporate web site.
Frozen ropes started in 1988 in an old iron factory in New Rochelle, New York. It began with an emphasis on teaching skills to baseball players at their indoor facility. The business grew and today boasts locations in the United States, Canada and Europe. New locations for 2006 according to the site include: Long Island, NY, Charlotte, NC, Toronto, Canada, Tyngsboro, MA, Phoenix, AZ, New Providence, NJ. Today there are many Major League Baseball stars associated with the organization.
The location near me has 10 full sized stalls. These are protected by the typical heavy nets but they are very tall. You can easily have a good overhand throwing session in one of these. 8 of the ten stalls have baseball pitching machines and the other two have wheel style softball machines. Each of the 8 baseball stalls has an artificial pitching mound. The first night I was in there, the place was jammed with teams doing hitting, throwing and some other skills. I understand that you can rent stalls for almost any length of time and because it is open until 9:00 pm, it is perfectly suitable for teams coached by adults with daytime jobs.
While I was there were, I saw some lessons going on - Frozen Ropes prides itself on its teaching methods. There was one guy teaching boys to throw and pitch and a gal teaching a couple girls how to windmill pitch. I've seen a fair amount of "professional" teaching and my judgment was that this was at least as good as what I have seen other places. I don't recall the rates but my recollection was they were competitive with other places.
Frozen Ropes represents a franchise opportunity to those of you interested in building a business like this. I'm not contemplating that myself so I didn't get real far into looking at this. But it seems like something you could succeed at if softball and baseball are big in your area but there are few indoor facilities. The place by me is located in an industrial park and covers something like 8,000 square feet. I suppose rent might be an issue but you do not need pristine space. What you would be looking at is a warehouse type facility. From there I imagine the cost of the rope cages would be fairly large. Pitching machines represents another significant cost. Aside from this I imagine insurance would be your next biggest cost. Well, if you are interested in this, you can contact the company and get the particulars.
Frozen Ropes struck me as more of a baseball place than a softball one. As I said, most of the facilities are set up for baseball. But that doesn't make them unusable for softball. The baseball pitching mound does not cut down the space you would have to practice softball pitching. And while an overhand delivery doesn't help softball hitters, you certainly can benefit from hitting the smaller, white baseballs if all the softball stalls are taken I also suppose that the facility by me was set up for baseball mostly because that is what they get. It stands to reason that if they had 50% softball trade, the set up would reflect that.
Prices for using this facility are not cheap. One stall was $20 for fifteen minutes and $60 for 60. But I also understand that if you have an organization which will regularly use the place, you can negotiate lower rates. I suppose this depends on the ownership of the location. But it doesn't cost you anything to inquire. I don't know what your average high school charges for using their gym but presumably it ain't cheap and if all you want to do is hitting, pitching or two-person throwing drills, this is a viable alternative.
If you would like to learn more about Frozen Ropes, visit their web site and view some of the national news media articles about them.
Permanent Link: Winter Practice
 
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