The Sowden Flanagan Baseball Training facility will be allowed to open soon but under some restrictive new guidelines thanks to COVID-19 regulations.

Co-owner Shane Sowden said they went back and forth in emails with the government about when they would be allowed to re-open their Moose Jaw facility they just opened in the fall of 2019.

There was a time, even earlier this week when it didn't look like they would be approved to open. 

“We did get approval, but in a very limited fashion, which was exciting for us,” Sowden said. “As of (Monday), we’re going to open the doors again and over the next (few) days, putting together plans and protocols and safety measures in place to meet all the restrictions and safety precautions put forth by the government.”

Once they do open again Monday, Sowden said they will be looking a little bit different than it did in the past, with smaller groups and new restrictions.

“The big thing is, and this is what all the other facilities are having to operate under, is just to make sure that we’re doing the same thing, is that everyone has to use their own equipment,” Sowden said. “There’s literally no sharing of equipment. There’s no playing catch. So, basically what we’ve been told we can do, is kids can throw the balls into the netting in our facility, which for certain training things we do, we already do.”

Fielding will be only done off a wall, and there’s a little bit of batting practice they can do, but the kids can’t shag balls that have been hit or thrown. There are also social distancing regulations as well, with six feet separation at all times.

“If we want to pitch, we can throw to targets in place on the net,” he said. “We’re pretty limited at this time as to what we can do…. it’s pretty stringent, but at this time, those are things that are essential to the game. They get to throw a little bit, they can hit some, pitch and hopefully do a little bit of fielding, and those are things kids haven’t been able to do for the last few months… it’ll be fun getting in there and doing something for a few weeks, and hopefully, in Phase 4, we can get back to some sort of normalcy.”

Despite that, he expects demand will be relatively high from kids missing baseball activities.