By Brady Extin | The Times-Post
PENDLETON — A long-awaited Pendleton indoor sports facility held its grand opening on Saturday when W Athletics, located in the Falls Park Sports Complex, opened its doors to the public.
The 9,600-square-feet facility had been in development since September 2020 and will be used to hone skills in baseball, softball and golf, along with speed, agility and strength training.
The facility is owned and operated by Pendleton residents Cal and Jody Wilson with the hopes of it being a place that can benefit the Pendleton community.
“This is kind of always what I wanted when I was a kid, so that’s how it kind of took shape. We had done something on a much smaller scale in 2010, and just decided to make it bigger,” Cal Wilson said. “It was something the community needed, and it’s just crazy that we didn’t have something like this already.”
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Helping Cal and Jody with the training are two more members of the Wilson family.
Cal’s brother Ethan will provide baseball training and his cousin Damon will offer golf training.
“I’ve been involved with the golf business my whole life, and Cal is my cousin. I grew up in Pendleton, and I’m from Pendleton, but I’ve been all around the United States seeing golf,” Damon Wilson said. “He [Cal] asked me to help him, and with where I’ve been and what I’ve seen, I think I can help anybody with their golf game.”
The facility’s lower level boasts a turf baseball diamond, and the upper level centers around golf instruction.
“I think it came together really well,” Damon Wilson said. “Cal’s put a lot of time and effort into it, and he’s put it together real nicely.”
One simulator, decked out with the Flightscope Mevo+, will be used to monitor swing statistics and allow for indoor golf practice.
“What I’m trying to do is for anybody from beginners to advanced golfers, just be able to give them as many pointers as I can,” Damon Wilson said. “Especially beginners, because they aren’t going to know a whole lot about the golf swing or how to get started with the golf swing, so that’s why I want to come in and try to help people learn. I want to just give them the basics so that way they can go play, practice and have fun with it.”
While Damon handles the golf upstairs, Ethan, along with JW Hitting, will provide the baseball and softball instruction.
Ethan, a former member of the Chicago White Sox organization, will provide hitting, speed and agility, base running, and fielding drills, as well as instruction in overall baseball psychology and overall athlete explosiveness.
“I’ve played baseball for 20-something years and took some time off, but now it’s time to get back into it,” Ethan Wilson said. “It does help that my brother is the one doing it, but just being able to give back and spread a little bit of the knowledge that I was able to attain and see if I can impact a couple kids’ lives here and there.”
The facility will also be the new home of JW Hitting, and will offer small-class instruction ranging from beginner to advanced for baseball and softball.
“We’re working on mechanics, tempo and timing. We really pride ourselves on a 2-1 ratio between students and staff, so it’s almost a one-on-one feel in a class setting,” JW Hitting partner Nick Pfafman said. “For younger hitters, we also offer a beginner class where it’s just tee swings and swing building.”
Along with hitting instruction, there will also be fielding lessons and possibly base running lessons in the future.
“Hopefully we can touch on the whole game eventually,” Pfafman said. “The facility is beautiful. It’s perfect. We’re just really blessed to have a space like this to be able to offer our clients more than we have been able to in the past.”
The overall goal of each trainer, along with Cal and Jody, is to make the facility into a place that can help youth sports in Pendleton grow and prosper.
“I’ve been telling a lot of parents to just wait and check where the high school programs are at in four or five years,” Cal Wilson said. “I think this place is going to help move the needle, or at least that’s the plan.”
That can already be seen in the Indiana Arabians travel baseball program that has begun using the facility for indoor practice nearly every week.
“This is going to get our program so much better,” Pendleton Heights assistant baseball coach Rene Casas said. “We already have the travel teams here working from 8u to 14u just getting better and working on fundamentals to help feed into the system.”
From beginners, to travel teams, to individuals just wanting to improve their skills, W Athletics has brought the town and community of Pendleton something that it has been for a very long time.
“It’s going to create a different trajectory. It’s long overdue in Pendleton, and it’s something that people have been looking forward to,” Ethan Wilson said. “It’s going to be good for a lot of people in a lot of different ways.”
