Ep. # 68 Building Better Athletes with Cutting-Edge Facilities

Discover how a local need sparked the creation of South Charlotte's latest sports innovation, Players Athletic Club, with Blair Henson at the helm. Uncover the story of how Blair's nephew, Jack, inspired the development of this cutting-edge baseball and softball training facility, providing a much-needed resource for young athletes in the area. From reducing lengthy travel times for training to offering extensive services such as high-tech HitTrax home run derbies, Players Athletic Club is set to transform the athletic landscape for kids ages seven to college. With seven indoor cages and climate-controlled comfort, it's a haven for anyone looking to refine their game.

Join us as we explore the diverse range of offerings the club provides, from basic cage rentals and private instruction to unforgettable birthday parties. Blair Henson shares exciting details about upcoming winter programs designed to enhance arm care and fielding skills, ensuring athletes stay at the top of their game during the offseason. Tune in to hear how Players Athletic Club is more than just a facility—it's a community, offering convenience, support, and expert coaching to aspiring players right in their backyard.

Players Athletic Club
Blair Henson
3525 Latrobe Drive
Charlotte, NC 28211
704-562-8229
bhenson@theplayersathleticclub.com
theplayersathleticclub.com

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Regina Lee.

Speaker 2 0:10

Hi everybody and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast here in South Charlotte. And today I have with us Blair Henson. He is the Director of Operations at Players Athletic Club. Welcome, blair.

Speaker 3 0:25

Hi, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 0:28

Absolutely so. First question is what is this? I've never heard of it, and I'm now discovering there's a good reason. It's brand new to Charlotte, so tell us about it.

Speaker 3 0:39

So we're the Players Athletic Club and we are located on La Trobe Drive and we are a state-of-the-art baseball and softball training facility. We have seven cages and thousands of square feet of perfed indoor, climate-controlled practice space that is tailored towards teams and individuals looking for private instruction, skills assessment or just kind of a tune-up before the season begins.

Speaker 2 1:07

That is amazing, so I would guess there is a story behind all of this.

Speaker 3 1:12

How did it come to be so?

Speaker 3 1:15

It all started with my nephew, my nephews, jack and T.

Speaker 3 1:20

T plays lacrosse and Jack has gotten really into travel baseball and basically what we realized is he was seeking out a lot of these types of facilities and he was driving to Gastonia, he was driving to Fort Mill he, a facility in this part of town in South Charlotte, in the Myers Park, south Park, eastover area, and we realized that there are so, so many players in this area and there's not a facility really to serve them. And we realized that parents, especially parents of multiple kids, would be really excited about the convenience factor of a place that's literally just five, ten minutes from their house. And that, honestly, has been one of the most encouraging things that we've experienced since opening is how many parents have walked through our door and just been so relieved that they didn't have to drive an hour and rush hour traffic just to get to a lesson, just to have to turn around an hour later and drive 30, 45 minutes back. So that I think has been really, really encouraging for us is just the convenience and ease of getting to our location.

Speaker 2 2:34

That's amazing. So let's talk about the services you guys offer. It sounds like I'm imagining this beautiful facility and I know there's photographs on the website, but what can you guys offer these kids?

Speaker 3 2:48

So we offer a wide range of services, the most basic being just cage rentals. So if a father and son or father and daughter for softball wanted to come in and just throw a batting practice, just hit off a tee or hit soft toss, they could rent a cage for 30 minutes. They could rent a cage for an hour. So that would be our most basic offering. From there we go up to private instruction, so you could have a 30-minute private lesson with one of our instructors. You could have an hour private lesson with one of our instructors. We also offer birthday parties.

Speaker 3 3:22

We're so excited we just got a state of the art hit tracks installed, which is a really, really cool diagnostic device. It does gosh, it does all sorts of things. But one of the things that has been the most fun for us to watch is in testing it out. There's a home run derby feature and so we've gotten some kids in. You select a stadium from one of the pro ballparks and get in and have a home run derby, and it's been so much fun for us to watch just these kids light up getting in and getting to hit home runs in some of the ballparks that they watch on TV. So we really do have a wide array of offerings. But we were most excited right now to, as we work into the offseason, we are offering a winter arm care program and some winter fielding programs which are gonna be set up kind of like clinics, but it offers more kids to get in for an hour at a time and really work on some of those skills that will help them in the off season leading into the next season.

Speaker 2 4:23

That is so cool. So what ages do you have? A must be age minimum.

Speaker 3 4:30

We really we really cater to anyone, honestly, from seven years old all the way up to college age. We don't we certainly don't discriminate on age. A lot of our clinics are are geared towards kind of the 10 to 14 range and so and several of our clinics have different age groups that they cater to. But part of what we're most excited about, too, is that we kind of are primed to meet our clients just really wherever they are in their baseball journey. So whether it's a kid that just wants to get some work on the tee, who's going into his first year of kid pitch, or if it's a kid who's trying to make his high school team for the first year, we don't really have a, we don't really have an age restriction, so that that's also opened us up to be able to serve, I think, a greater part of the baseball population for sure.

Speaker 2 5:17

Well then, you just made me realize this isn't just for the elite, this is for anybody.

Speaker 3 5:23

Right, and that's where we're definitely excited about that. And not only that, but we also are just as much of a softball facility as we are baseball, and so we have everything we offer baseball wise. We offer softball as well. So we're excited we have our first team that is signed on, that's going to be joining us in the next month or two, and so we're excited to get them, to get the girls, in and have them practice in our facility. So, yeah, not only is it, are we open to young baseball players. Young softball players are just as welcome, for sure.

Speaker 2 5:59

And did I hear?

Speaker 3 6:00

girls too. Yes, yes, definitely yes. So we have, we are. We are wide open to the softball, to the softball crowd, and we're working on getting our first softball instructor in, but we definitely right now we are so excited to have our first softball team come in and start to practice, and we've noticed that there are just as many softball teams as there are baseball teams out there, so we are excited to offer everything that we offer to our baseball teams to softball teams as well, to offer everything that we offer to our baseball teams to softball teams as well.

Speaker 2 6:35

Cool, so I was looking online and you know it sounds like some of the technology that you guys offer is pretty cutting edge. Talk to us about the DBS pitching analysis.

Speaker 3 6:41

It is, honestly, it's beyond some of my realm of understanding.

Speaker 3 6:46

It's so advanced, but it is a really really cool system that essentially analyzes a pitcher's motion and then it gets sent off and it's uploaded into a system and it gets sent off to a main server and it's analyzed through this software and you basically, in turn, you get back an assessment or analysis of your pitching motion.

Speaker 3 7:07

So it's an incredible tool for Jim Rooney, our director of player development, to use to help a pitcher, especially in the off season, to start fine tuning their mechanics and of their pitching motion for the for the upcoming season. So that is, that's a really cool tool that we have. We have the Rapsodo 2.0, which is another incredible tool that pairs with an iPad, which essentially it does for pitchers and hitters it analyzes their pitching motion, their swing, and that pairs also with the HitTracks, which I mentioned earlier that we just had installed, which is another incredible tool that does really the same stuff. It does the same stuff in a different way, but we have all these incredible tools at our disposal to help players fine-tune their swings and their pitching, their pitching motions.

Speaker 2 7:56

That sounds amazing. I bet kids are loving this. Their eyes want to pop wide open when they come in. So tell us where again, where you're located and how our listeners can reach you guys.

Speaker 3 8:09

Our address is 3525 Latrobe Drive and you can find us on our website. It's wwwtheplayersathleticclubcom.

Speaker 2 8:20

And is that where you can book, if you're interested in booking, cage rental lessons? Any of those things?

Speaker 3 8:26

Absolutely. You can see all of our prices, our packages, everything's all on our website. It's kind of a one-stop shop, so you can go there, you can see all of our offerings, you click on, you can buy a package and then you book through our scheduling apparatus, which is on our website.

Speaker 2 8:42

That's amazing. Well, Blair, this is so exciting to have something new and exciting like this for the kids, and I'm happy to have met you. I wish you all success. I know it's going to be amazing.

Speaker 3 8:56

Absolutely Thank you, and thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 8:59

Absolutely, thank you.

Speaker 1 9:01

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. No-transcript.