Indoor baseball-softball facility opens in Longmont

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    Colorado baseball and softball is set to take another step
    toward developing major talent with the creation of the year-round Extra
    Innings training facility in Longmont.

    The facility, which features multiple batting cages
    measuring 14 feet wide by 69 feet long, is housed in a 12,000-square-foot
    building off Ninth Avenue and Atwood Street, and is set for its grand opening Saturday.

    The goal, says owner Mike Newton,
    is to help push the state’s talent in both sports to the next level – whether
    that means moving kids from the youth level to travel ball, or from high school
    to the collegiate ranks.

    “My big focus was to give these kids an opportunity to go
    play at the next level,” Newton says. “It’s amazing how that
    has even evolved from going – when I was a kid, you played football, and then
    you jumped into basketball or wrestling, and then after that, you jumped right
    into baseball, and then it all started over. Now, everything is becoming so
    specialized.”

    Extra Innings will be no different. It offers four
    instructors who each have lengthy backgrounds in the sports themselves –
    including Newton, who played collegiately at Regis University in Denver, and
    his wife, Leta, who played softball at Regis.

    The cages features 17 feet of clearance, which will allow
    the batter to actually read the trajectory of each swing, Newton says.

    Because it is housed indoors, it will allow training to
    continue year-round – and give teams an alternative to fighting for gym time
    when other sports, such as basketball and wrestling, are in-season during the
    winter months.

    States like California, Arizona and Florida have traditionally had the advantage of being able to play play year-round because of warm offseason weather, and as such, develop a higher-than-average number of players who move on to higher levels of baseball and softball.

    Extra Innings is a national brand with 35 locations in 17
    states. The location in Longmont is the first of its kind in Colorado, but the
    company is hoping to expand to six facilities in the Denver metro area within
    five years.

    “They have a proven track
    record,” Newton says. “
    It’s not recreating or re-inventing the wheel. It’s pretty
    much taking the idea or the concept that they have and running with it. The
    other aspect that I liked about it is they’re not telling me how to teach
    baseball, which is great. It’s my philosophies, or my other instructor’s
    philosophies, which we think can help (the players that come to the facility) make it to the next level.”

    Longmont’s Extra Innings also features a pro shop with all
    types of gear, and party rooms are available.

    For more information, call the facility at 303-776-2255 or visit www.extrainningslongmont.com.