Club Roma adds training facility
The St. Catharines Club Roma Wolves have a new home away from home.
The club has opened a new 22,100-foot indoor training facility in St. Catharines which Club Roma general manager of soccer operations Mark Bolton says is a “game changer.”
“We have something that’s 12 months a year now,” he said. “We can use this in the summertime when fields get shut down so practices don’t need to get canceled. They can come here and train. We can do individual training. We can do team training. We can do leagues. We have our own control.”
Bolton said the facility, located on Oakdale Avenue, was a must as the club continues to expand.
Roma’s registration for 2025 is more than 1,200 players. The club plans to operate 40 travel teams compared to 23 last season and their high performance program had gone from two teams to this year to nine.
“It’s always something that we wanted to do and now as a club we’re growing so quickly that it became a need, not a want anymore,” he said. “This year we didn’t have a lot of time at other locations so it kind of forced our hand a little bit to move forward.”
The facility will ensure players can train year around.
“It was just like when we made a partnership with the DSBN in regard to getting turf fields,” Bolton said. “We added another four to five months to our summer schedule and now we’re at 12 months.
Bolton said the project came together quickly.
“It took me about three months to look at almost every warehouse in Niagara and we were able to find one that we thought was suitable and to create three fields out of it,” Bolton said. “The lease was signed Dec. 6 and the facility opened Jan. 9.”
The facility consists of three mini soccer fields as well as other areas for training and Bolton said the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.
“When they walk in, they’re all very, very excited about having something of their own that they can use,” Bolton said. “Our coaches, they find this is perfect for small-sided games. It’s great for tight space training. So it’s not necessarily a game facility, it’s more a training facility and that’s exactly what we’re calling it, a high-performance training facility.”
The club will also run smaller leagues (five-versus-five and four-versus-four) at the facility.
Bolton is also excited about sharing the space with other organizations.
“So our whole idea behind this is that we want to make this a community-based training facility,” he said. “We are now working with St. Catharines Cobras to come in here and they’re renting time from us. So we’re going to have batting cages in here, we’re going to have pitching mounds and there’s a plyometric wall that is being built right now for them.”
Bolton said Roma would also like to work with Brock University and the St. Catharines Athletics.
“St. Catharines, in my opinion, has faltered providing something. So I think this is something that we can really try to grow and provide for every community-based organization.”
Bolton said the facility was made possible by sponsorship donations, including MultiTurf Canada.
“They provided the top end turf that you can provide. They came in here and they helped us massively with design suggestions and they want to be a big part of what we’re trying to do moving forward too,” Bolton said.
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