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Less than two years ago, Kevin Plein and Darin Feldman left their corner offices in New York City after 25 years to open their popular A-Game summer baseball and softball camps. Following two years of successful training campers with a class staff, they decided to take the next step, opening the new athletics facility at 856 Main St.
Last week, Plein and Feldman opened the doors of their brand new, 25,000-square-foot facility to the public, where they are offering nearly any and all training options for athletes of all ages and abilities.
The new space includes a turf infield for defensive baseball and softball training, several batting tunnels, and a large “multi-sport field,” which can be partitioned in multiple ways to allow for multiple teams in any number of sports to train at once. There’s also a small, enclosed area near the entrance where lacrosse players can play wall ball and practice their stick handling skills.
Unique to A-Game Sports is the HitTrax machine, a high speed, infrared batting simulator that allows batters and trainers to track where hits off a tee would have travelled on the field, while offering useful statistics such as: bat speed, exit ball velocity, max distance, max pitch velocity and a swing tracker among others.
Feldman said that with the rise the new location, they’ve already seen a rapid expansion of their client base into Larchmont, Mount Vernon, Yonkers and even the Bronx.
“There’s been a lot more to manage. We’re not just focusing two sports anymore, now it’s all of them, so it’s more of a time constraint,” he added. “It’s provided us a lot of exposure to more communities on a much broader scale as a result. It’s definitely been a lot more programs to work, but we’ve already seen benefits.”
A-Game Sports also has a sizable strength and conditioning area directly next to the turf multi-sport field, something that is not common in many similar gyms.
“A lot of places like ours have strength and conditioning, but most aren’t adjacent to the field,” Feldman said. “This allows you to seamlessly go back and forth in between sets, giving more flexibility. Our trainers love it.”
In addition to limitless number of athletic programs, A-Game Sports also has three sizable multi-purpose rooms that will be used for tutoring, coaches meetings, after school programming and a place for adults while their children play. All of the rooms can be rented, and the owners believe that in the future their facility will play host to bat mitzvahs, graduation parties and other events.
“We’re really just scratching the surface, there’s so many things we can do (with the location),” Plein said. “We think of it as a hub for activity. It will enable us to reach out to other areas, broaden our horizons.”
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