POST FALLS - They've built it - now it's up to the public to use it.

The Premier Sports Center, a 9,600-square-foot indoor sports facility located at 5980 E. Commerce Drive off Seltice Way between Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene, will celebrate its grand opening tonight with a barbecue and open house at 5 p.m.

Troy Nowell, who is an assistant coach for the Prairie "AA" American Legion baseball team, is the director of operations of the center, owned by Shannon Horn.

Currently set up for baseball and softball, future plans include also holding sports academies in soccer and lacrosse.

"We've got a list of priorities that we want to accomplish," Nowell said. "We're going to have the academies, as well as allowing teams to rent the facility to train during the offseason."

"We've already had some teams contact us about availability," Nowell said. "The Coeur d'Alene lacrosse team has expressed interest in doing some training in the building."

The area has a pitching simulator, which has a screen with a pitcher going through his motions and throwing six different pitches - with the top speed reaching at least 90 miles an hour. It can also use a computer to analyze the swing of a batter from the simulator.

"The image will go through a timing sequence and a ball will come through a hole in the screen," Nowell said. "We'll have lefties, righties and can set the machine to whatever we decide to do. If we want to set the image to a Little Leaguer, we'll get an image of a Little Leaguer and change it timing-wise."

For Horn, who built the facility so his children (Cameron and Kelsie Horn) had somewhere to practice, he saw a need for the entire area.

"There's no facilities like this for our kids during the winter time," Horn said. "My daughter plays softball and my son plays baseball and they work on their skills in here. What we want to do is help these kids grow. There's so many in need of a place to do this in the winter time."

In addition to the pitching simulator, there are four batting cages on a roller-track system that are 20 feet wide, with the ability to pull back and open two areas for pitching, defensive drills and hitting fungos.

For soccer and lacrosse, Nowell can pull the nets back and the area opens to a 110x85-foot area. If all goes well, they could add facilities.

"The owners bought another six acres, with a chance to build another facility in the coming years," Nowell said. "Depending on how things go and how we can raise the money, but we'd be able to house a full football, soccer and lacrosse field, with a larger baseball field."

They've still got limited space to work with football teams.

"If we do anything, it would be lineman work or quarterback-to-receiver drills," Nowell said. "Potentially, we could have quarterbacks here to do skills work and work on footwork."

They will also host between six to eight camps, as well as set up an area to receive and sell used sporting equipment. Camps won't likely begin until next summer, according to Nowell.

"Right now, we'll likely wait 9 or 10 months," Nowell said. "Once kids are out of school again, we'll likely have some camps in either baseball, softball, soccer or lacrosse. We're a nonprofit group. So we'll see what the interest is and build from that."

By opening the facility to the public, both Horn and Nowell believe that with practice, players can compete with the best in the northwest.

"I think a big part was how kids during the six months of winter time aren't doing very much," Horn said. "We want to approach the academy with the right kind of things, including bringing in coaches from around the northwest for some camps to give them different looks. We live in an area that we don't have the advantage of those kids in Arizona or even Seattle. Playing against a lot of those teams, we want to be able to give them the facilities so they can go out and challenge some of them."

A point was also driven home by the Post Falls Majors' team run to the Northwest Little League Regional championship game in San Bernardino three weeks ago.

"It's just like our kids from Post Falls," Nowell said. "They almost made it back to Pennsylvania. We just want to be able to give them that extra step."

Information: email troy@premiersportscenter.org