Custom Netting for Commercial Sports Training Facilities
Throughout the years, Gourock.com has supplied many commercial sports training facilities and businesses with their barrier and protective nets. Ranging from new upstart regional businesses, to large established sports training firms, Gourock has the capability to quote, manufacture, and ship custom nets for each unique installation. There are quite a few examples of different sports facility nets that we have supplied over the years throughout this company blog and on the Gourock.com site – but here is another interesting example from the last month that may help you during your research into protective sports netting and the custom netting options that are available to you.
Netting that is being installed at locations that are expected to be subjected to an increased amount of abrasion have a few characteristics to consider. Specifically – thicker netting twines are recommended for commercial establishments since those sorts of locations have an expectation that there will be lots of continuous users, resulting in a pretty consistent amount traffic and impact on the netting. As opposed to a lot of the netting that is used for general barrier and protective purposes, the nets that are installed at high-traffic training facilities for the same purposes are continuously subjected to various high-intensity impacts and wear-and-tear due to the amount of people and drills occurring within the facility every day. So for instance, a general protective barrier net that is surrounding a field or a set of bleachers is expected to be impacted intermittently, and those nets are there to contain balls and protect property and spectators. In contrast, the barrier nets at a sports facility will function for those same purposes – but also are utilized for other close-range and high-impact uses as well. For instance, soft-toss training for baseball and softball players. Or also for golf driving and hitting practice or drills (if the facility specializes in golf). Basically, since commercially-oriented training establishments generally want to be able to get the most overall use from their netting, the thicker netting twines really aid in dependably providing a double-duty job (general containment/safety, as well as close-range impact uses).
Here is a recent example of a series of custom nets that were manufactured and shipped out to a training facility in Ohio that concentrates on high school athletes performing a wide variety of sports including baseball, softball, football, soccer, lacrosse, and golf. So there were certain areas of their facility that they preferred the heavy-duty golf impact netting to take-care of all of the expected sports (since golf netting will also block/contain all of the larger objects as well), whereas there were some areas that were only to be geared towards the larger impact objects (basically everything larger than a golf ball). And since this sort of netting installation calls for the thicker materials for the higher abrasion that comes with high traffic usage, the recommended materials for this project were the #21 X 3/4″ knotted nylon netting, and the #36 X 1-3/4″ knotted nylon netting. These are both DuPont® type 66-728 twisted-knotted nylon netting constructions, black in coloring, and built diamond mesh pattern with 5/16″ Dacron® (polyester) rope borders sewn-in around the perimeter.
In addition to the considerations of high abrasion/traffic and the multipurpose usage of the netting, there were also customized features integrated into the actual finished netting panels themselves. For instance, as you can see from the fabrication drawings below, there are several notes and identifiers that make these netting productions unique to this particular location specifically:
- custom dimensions for all of the different finished netting panels
- polyester rope riblines installed within the area of the netting to line-up with the angles and connection points of the building’s walls and ceiling taper locations
- weighted rope bottom edges (leadline bottom ropes)
- overlapping netting entrance door areas built to line-up with existing doors at the facility
