Local resident Kelly Cooper is creating a batting cages facility at the former site of a skating rink near Beverly. He has formed the Randolph County Cages, a non-profit organization that is still accepting donations to help complete the building’s transformation.

“When I first started helping Todd Biller with travel baseball a few years back, we were looking for a place where kids could work on their game when it was bad outside, but we really couldn’t find anywhere,” Cooper, who is an assistant baseball coach at Elkins Middle School, told The Inter-Mountain Thursday. “And nobody seemed to want to give us a chance to try and see what we had.

“Then one day I was driving down the back road to Beverly and looked over and saw the old skating rink. So I gave the owner of the building a call and we worked out a lease deal on the building.”

Cooper is currently turning the old Superior Laundries building into an indoor haven for baseball and softball enthusiasts. The facility, located on SH Wood Road near Beverly, at one point in time housed a skating rink.

Randolph County Cages, a non-profit organization, is currently turning the old Superior Laundries building, located on SH Wood Road near Beverly, into a batting cages training facility. At one point the building housed a skating rink.

“We’ve pretty well gutted the building, because it wasn’t in any condition where we could go in and go,” Cooper said. “So we took the drop ceiling out of it and did a lot of other things in the past several months.

“As soon as the rest of the donations come in, we are going to get the lights installed, which will be a big step,” he said. “So probably next week or so when we do get the lights, we are going to open up the hall, just enough space for a cage for clinics. Then in about four or five weeks, we should be good and will have an open house for the entire community.”

And it’s been the community that Cooper said has stepped up and contributed to the project.

“I’ve had great support from the Elkins community,” he noted. “I’ve had several people step up and contribute, but they didn’t want their names mentioned. The Randolph County Commission gave us a donation last week of $5,000, which was pretty big for us.”

Once the new facility is complete, it will house five batting cages and several batting-t stations. There will also be areas to work on pitching and fielding, along with a walking track around the center, which Cooper said can be used by adults while their children are fine-tuning their skills.

He also plans to have an area for golf lessons for both children and adults, and to have a HitTrax System installed, which Cooper says critiques a player’s swing.

“The HitTrax system is for baseball and softball,” he said. “It does everything, including critiquing everything about a player’s swing, from how hard they are hitting the ball to the spin on it. It’s really amazing, it’s like a Playstation game. They have one in Morgantown and we actually have people drive down there to use it. It will really benefit our kids from every age group.”

For more information on the facility or to make a contribution, call Cooper at 304-642-3773.

“This is not just for kids in Randolph County, it’s for Barbour County, Tucker County or any of the surrounding areas,” Cooper said. “We want to get baseball and softball back, because the kids really lost a lot during COVID. Since 2019, we’ve really lost a lot of time with those two sports. We are going to have a lot of clinics for the kids and hopefully we can make some stuff happen here in the next couple of years.”