Iron Horse on WTAJ TV 10

WINDBER, SOMERSET COUNTY – It may say spring on the calendar, but it still looked and felt like winter Friday. However, the lingering winter weather will no longer going to be an issue for spring sports. A three million dollar indoor sports complex is ready to welcome athletes for year round training.

The Iron Horse Sports Complex in Windber is set to open around late April. The new facility will provide athletes the opportunity to practice both indoors and outdoors, but as big of an opportunity as it is for the kids practicing, it’s an even bigger deal for the town.

Tyler Weyant is the tournament director for the sports complex. He says he already has over 400 kids signed up to play in the Iron Horse League plus more than 120 teams signed up for the travel league. He’s expecting such a big crowd that he has reached out to additional areas when it comes to booking hotels, “A lot of our travel teams that are coming in for tournaments are going to book at all of the Johnstown hotels. I’ve even branched out into Altoona, Bedford, and Somerset for hotels so I think it’s not going to just be great just for Johnstown, it’s going to be great for surrounding areas as well.”

Weyant says these teams will be traveling from bigger cities like Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and from out of state.

According to Weyant, it would make this small community a destination for tournaments, “We want to be one of those destination places where teams can come from New Jersey, Virginia, all over to play at our tournaments because it’s a high quality event.”

Small business owners like Windber Hotel co-owner Thomas Piscitella say they couldn’t be happier, “People are going to be coming into town and once they find out there are other places to go around here other than the chain restaurants, word gets around, I just think it’s going to nothing but great for us.”

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