Grand Opening! Free Sessions and Free Food!

We are very excited to announce details about our GRAND OPENING on Monday, May 6th 2013!

This is Bloomington Normal's first chance to see what we are all about. We will be operating at 100% capacity, meaning all tunnels open, all pitching machines running! We will throw our ceremonial first pitch in the tunnels at 12:00 pm. Followed by a barbecue in the parking lot. The cages will be open all day until 8 p.m. We are giving out a coupon for a free 1/2 session in the automatic cages for anyone who comes out to the grand opening. Redeemable immediately!

Anyone who comes to the Grand Opening will be able to use the automatic cages, rent a tunnel for pitching and hitting use, or simply walk around the academy and get a feel for things.

After our grand opening, we will open our facilities for normal operational hours. This means all week long you can come in between 12 pm and 8 pm, and on the weekends from 8 am until 8 pm. Our prices can be found in a previous post on this blog. These rates will not change without further notice.

Our professional instructors will be at the grand opening, feel free to chat them up! They would love to hear from you. They are looking to start scheduling clients for this entire month of May. Don't miss your opportunity!

Some Pricing Details---Memberships Available Soon!

We have met with our investors and advisors, and have finally settled on what we believe to be the perfect prices for your training needs. Before we upload a table with our prices, we want our customers to fully understand what services The Baseball Academy can provide you with. In the following section you will see details on each of our special membership packages. We wanted to give you the choice, to figure out how much instruction and how many of The Baseball Academy's resources you want to take advantage of. We have also outlined prices for customers who aren't quite ready to commit. We charge by the half hour, hour, for our automatic cages, tunnel rentals, and instructional sessions. 

Our 1st group of packages are the Single, Double, and Triple packages. 

In these packages customers can pay for blocks of time at a discounted rate. 

Our 2nd type of package is the Home Run package. This is a one time fee for a year’s worth of time in the facility. Under this membership, customers are given one hour a week in the academy and three free clinics for the entire year. 

Our largest package, Grand Slam includes three hours a week and five free clinics for an entire year.

Our Home Run and Grand Slam members will have the opportunity to utilize our online player profile database for no additional costs. We will post statistics, details about training, and scouting reports for these members. 

Here are our regular prices:

Automated Cages (12 pitches): rental

15 minutes = $15

30 minutes = $25

All you can hit: $10

Sundays and Wednesdays

1) Between 6-9pm on wednesdays

2) Between 1pm - 4pm on Sundays

Tunnel Rental: (without instruction)

$25 for half hour

$45 for hour

Instruction tunnel rental:

$35 for half hour

$65 for hour

When The Baseball Academy is open, you will be able to call in and reserve a tunnel during a specific time slot within the next month. We will also have an online reservation option. With our reservation system, we will never have all tunnels rented so a reservation isn't absolutely necessary, but still encouraged.

Exciting News from The Baseball Academy

We are excited to announce a status update and new features that have arrived at The Baseball Academy!


1.  We have finally finished with the interior of our facilities. We have the tunnels set up and ready to be used! We have the turf, pitching mound and netting all in place, only thing missing is a bat and ball. The netting that separates each of the 5 tunnels can be removed as well as the pitching mounds, creating one large field of fielding practice and group instructions.

2. The Iron Mike Pitching Machines have finally arrived. These machines are the industry leader in pitching machines. Their range is 25-85 mph, perfect for all amateur baseball players! These machines feature an arm throwing style that best simulates that of a real pitcher. We are almost finished with the installation of the machines in three of our five tunnels.

 3. The Baseball Academy is working harder than ever to prepare for our proposed opening day. We will continue to keep our fans updated. We anticipate announcing our official grand opening within the next couple of days so stay tuned!

 

Who Are We?

We would like to take a minute to introduce the owners of The Baseball Academy. In order to properly introduce ourselves, we need to include a brief history.

All four of the owners are alumnus of Illinois State University. We graduated together in 2013 with degrees in Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship. We all had a few classes together, including one where we had to write a business plan for a business we would want to start. In this class, we researched the in's and out's of the indoor baseball training industry. While the project was based on a hypothetical business, it was one that we all dreamt of opening. Soon after college and after working normal full time jobs, we decided to make our dream into a reality.

1. Adam is a 22 year old entrepreneur from Chicago, Illinois. Before starting The Baseball Academy, Adam had worked in retail since he was 17 years old. He is an outdoorsman through and through. Baseball, softball, golf, biking, fishing, and snowboarding are just a few of his favorite activities.

2. Tom is from Pekin, Illinois and is a diehard Chicago sports fan. When discussing business ideas for the class project, Tom was the one who suggested The Baseball Academy. His love for sports has inspired him to start a baseball themed business and yes, Tom is a committed Cub's fan.

3. Jake, from South Elgin IL, is an avid baseball player and fan. He has played baseball all his life, starting with tee ball all the way to high school. Jake also enjoys traveling and brewing craft beers.

4. Karly rounds out the group of owners with the most experience in the industry. Previously Karly had worked for a similar business in her home town of Naperville, Illinois. Fun fact about Karly, she is the only White Sox fan of the four owners.

We are very excited as opening day is just around the corner! So come out and meet us, show us your swing, grab some free merchandise!

Welcome to The Baseball Academy

                                Welcome to the official blog of The Baseball Academy of Illinois!

Baseball Academy is a climate-controlled sports facility enabling year-round baseball/softball practice and instruction. Our facility will contain batting cages, conditioning equipment, and a large indoor space for fielding practice.

Baseball Academy offers players the oppurtunity to develop their skills year-round.  The layout of the facility also allows local teams to rent cages or feilding space to practice.  Aside from year-round cage rentals, Baseball Academy helps to develop players individually through assisted instruction.  The academy offers private, semi-private, and group lessons coached by experienced baseball professionals.  Our instructors also lead baseball camps that are available at the academy and on offsite locations through local park districts.

We are excited to finally get this up and running. We will be announcing our opening day within a few days. But before we open, we wanted to let people know what they can expect from The Baseball Academy!

Each week we will post a few blogs including photos of our facilities and features. As for our grand opening, we will have two automatic cages up and running and 4 tunnels open for rental/instructional use.

We look forward to opening up to the public and seeing all of the talent here in Bloomington, Normal! All customers that make it out to the grand opening will receive a goody bag full of gifts from our sponsors and a voucher for buy one gets one free lessons!

 Thanks for checking us out and remember to check back for updates! Spread the word about the academy and come out and enjoy us for our grand opening!