A tennis boom on the horizon?

The coronavirus epidemic shut down tennis across the country for months, but the layoff may push a huge revival.

tick…

BOOM!

For several months, tennis courts across the country resembled the Night Before Christmas, where “not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”

Tennis facilities across Colorado were locked and nets were removed to prevent any sort of social gatherings where the coronavirus could spread.

Despite the lockdown, Coloradans engaged in some clever socially distant tennis drills — taking their racquets to their back yards to volley over fences, into their basements and living rooms for spirited short-court matches, or out onto their driveways to battle the never-tired garage door.

As the lockdown began to ease, the courts began to reopen and leagues and tournaments were allowed to return. The pent up demand was evident, as participation in the two league seasons offered by USTA Colorado pushed past the 60% return rate. With nearly half of Colorado’s leagues being canceled, along with nearly 100 tournaments, the excitement to return to the courts is evidenced by the popularity of the opportunities that haven’t been forced to cancel.

In addition, programs for new players are exploding across the state. While the number of new players who have engaged with tennis this year has yet to be measured, anecdotally, it looks like the mayhem of 2020 may help ignite a new tennis boom.

The High Country

Summertime tourism is absolutely critical for our mountain communities, and the lockdown has sadly upended any sense of what is normal this year.

Youth camps are closed, summertime activities have been suspended, and vacations have been canceled until further notice.

People who live in and around Grand County, though, are discovering tennis, which is one of the few active options for parents and kids.

Kate Walker, who runs the Granby and Fraser’s tennis programs, can’t rely on indoor courts to feed her summer program (there aren’t any). The only courts around are the handful of public facilities that cater to a mostly vacationing demographic. Thanks to a USTA Colorado “Adopt-A-Court” Grant, as well as Fraser Valley Metropolitan Recreation District funds, a new surface, net posts and nets for courts were added in Grand County. Thanks to this investment, Kate says that the public has been overwhelmingly positive about tennis, especially beginners programs.

“They appreciate having the opportunity to join an organized program and have activities on their calendars,” she says.

“Grand County has many second home owners. In past years, second home owners might only be in town for a week at a time or during holiday periods. Now that people can work remotely, more and more second homeowners are staying in the mountains indefinitely and are getting involved in the community.”

Kate also mentions that normally, local families would travel quite a bit during the summer but are now staying closer to home. As a result, locals are signing up for more classes and private lessons.

“And because they are playing more tennis, participants are improving, which further motivates them to sign up for additional offerings.”

One big change, Kate says, is exposure.

“In addition to teaching a variety of youth classes, I offer tennis to both the Granby Rec and Fraser Rec day camp programs. In previous summers, the campers would get a quick exposure to tennis about once a week. This summer, the day camp could not take field trips to Elitches, Water World, Rockies games, etc., so tennis ended up being the big field trip!”

The town of Granby improvised and brought three buses full of kids to the courts for six consecutive weeks. The Fraser day camp played twice a week, totaling six hours of lessons each week for 10 weeks. Dozens upon dozens of kids were exposed to tennis as a result of the camp program. As the kids improved, they got more and more excited about coming to camp tennis and loved when we were able to play more “advanced” rally games.

Such was the demand that members of the USTA Colorado staff went up to help Kate run some of the larger programs, including a 3v3 tournament, Fraser’s first.

“There were 12 kids of different ages, who had a great time playing the 3v3 format,” says Nikki Hola, USTA Colorado’s Net Generation & Team Event Coordinator. The event also featured off-court activities from Net Generation, which showed the kids some things that they could do at home. “The tennis was exciting, sportsmanship was amazing and the kids seem to just love tennis.”

Up in Steamboat Springs, tennis got a late start due to the lockdown but has rebounded well, opening on May 16 and moving to high gear ever since.

Kristyn Wykert and Loretta Conway run numerous programs at the Steamboat Springs Tennis and Pickleball Center, and this year they note that virtually every program filled up and had wait lists.

“We loved being able to provide for these kids who have been cooped up over the last few months,” says Loretta. “We hosted our Giggle Gang class for kids ages 3-5 that was a huge hit, and our more competitive summer camps also filled up.”

Although all of their classes were maxed out, Loretta notes they were able to spread out and maintain a safe distance. Even pickleball, which started slowly, has returned to normal.

Steamboat has also hosted a few tournaments, but had to limit the number of people due to distancing rules. Despite the smaller crowds overall, “It was wonderful to be able to provide a safe environment for everyone,” says Loretta.

As they gear up for a full slate of fall programs, Loretta and her staff are extremely appreciative for the financial support they received from the City of Steamboat Springs and the Steamboat Tennis Association, which enabled them to add eight kids from its under-resourced community into summer camps.

The Center offered nine sessions of summer camps, and each kid was able to attend three camps on a full scholarship.

“I have to say, as a coach of the camps, I saw some of the greatest joy from these students. I am happy we were able to provide for them and get them out of the house and be active. Our SERVES program is set to start at the end of September this year for our second nine week session,” says Kristyn Wykert. SERVES, a partnership with USTA Colorado and the Colorado Youth Tennis Foundation, incorporates tennis and life skill learning for youth.

Western Slope

The Western Slope Open is a Grand Junction tradition, dating back 62 years. The entire community rallies behind this annual event, which features all ages and abilities.

Tournament director Kathy Elliott says that two months before the start of the event, it didn’t look like they’d be able to host at all due to the COVID crisis.

“Thanks to our parks & rec, and our Mesa County health department teaming with us, we were able to pull it off!”

But Kathy and team didn’t just “pull it off”. The community rallied behind them, and participation exploded.

“Normally, we average around 180 local folks playing but this year, we have 240 people and most all are from our county!”

In keeping with the recommendations of their health department, the WSO split adults and juniors between two facilities, and enforced mask usage whenever players went indoors.

“We are also using gallons of hand sanitizer,” Kathy says.

NoCO

Father/daughter duo, Larry Lewis and Annie Bachman, lead one of the most esteemed parks & rec programs in Northern Colorado through Lewis Tennis School, which has been in the business of providing instruction and programming for 50 years, and for the past 20 for the City of Fort Collins, at the Rolland Moore Park Racquet Center.

“With the pandemic, we’ve had new challenges, but our programs are completely full and we’ve seen random social play filling up the courts like never before,” Lewis says. “We’ve seen the biggest start to our summer in more than 15 years. It’s blown me away!”

Also up north, the Adaptive Recreation Opportunities crew partnered with NJTL of Fort Collins to host first and one of the only programs they were able to offer all summer. Brenda McDowell from the City of Fort Collins says, “Special Olympics provided us with all the resources we needed to create and maintain a safe environment as well as medals and goodies for the tournament. The athletes and their families expressed such gratitude in providing something for them to be involved in during this time when there aren’t a lot of options. The absence of activities and being able to connect with others has been tough for many so having tennis was a highlight of the summer for those who got to participate. The athletes loved it and are asking for more!”

Metro

Up in Arvada, Kim Greason has been having a very successful summer (you can read more about Kim in our HighFIVE).

Before the restrictions were eased to accommodate more players per court for drills and lessons, lots of players were champing at the bit, so Apex Tennis Center had to expand the number of courts they were using for each and every session.

Kids programming started later, Kim says, to help facilitate and adhere to government regulations regarding social distancing.

“While some were not quite ready to step back into playing in June or July, a large number were ready and felt safe with the guidelines we had put in place. Most of our drills and lessons are full and carry waitlists. We have even added extra courts and classes to accommodate the demand, and we are booking more rental courts than last summer.”

Kim feels that participation numbers have increased for several reasons. “With other high-risk sports being sidelined for most of the summer, this allowed us to introduce new players to the sport, both adults and kids. For example, we had many soccer players looking for something to do, so we helped sign them up for our rec programs, and several of them enjoyed it so much, they are looking to continue the sport. These are kids who may not have ever tried tennis due to the lack of time or fear of learning something new. We also feel the inability to travel has kept many families home this summer, so instead of being gone for weeks at a time from June through August, they have stayed home and played more tennis with us.”

That certainly seemed to be the case at the Apex Junior Championship event at the beginning of August. More than 220 kids took to the courts over three long days, playing in more than 300 matches, all while adhering to social distancing guidelines.

Up in Longmont, Steve Williams has been running his Front Range Academy for years. While experiencing a small decline in participation, Steve reports that he still had 160+ attendees, and that he expects a strong fall season as well.

Down in the south metro area, Parker Racquet Club and Pinery Country Club created a series of youth level 7/Intermediate events from June to August to fill the void of multiple tournament cancellations. Barry Riddle and Garry Seymour from the respective facilities stepped up to create opportunities that otherwise would not have been available to players.

“Despite Denver Tennis Park scrapping all of its huge plans for the summer, we converted a planned JTT inaugural season to an in-house JTT program,” says Chris Croxton, Director of Tennis. “We had 175 unique players sign up for a three-week pre-season and/or six-week regular season.” While mostly in-house to start, DTP partnered with Eastmoor Swim & Tennis, by way of a USTA Colorado introduction, that turned into three weeks of perfectly matched competition. “In fact, that match play initiated a sure long-term relationship between the two facilities,” Chris says. DTP is looking forward to the JTT Fall League with 17 brand new teams to compete against Eastmoor and other clubs in the Denver Metro area. CT