Adopt-A-Court Can SAVE A COURT.

Just a few years ago, the hard courts at the Odessa College Tennis Center were in ruins. Cracks on the courts were virtual canyons, wide enough to fit a tennis ball. While many of the cracks were near the net, "it was very detrimental to players," says pro Luis Valdez, who has run the West Texas tennis facility the past two years as an independent contractor.

The college, which had shut down its national championship tennis program in 1994 because of a budget crisis, was ready to raze the courts and build a parking lot and truck driving school.

But there were still people in the community who used the courts. One group, Valdez says, has been playing at the tennis center every Saturday morning for 20 years. They desperately wanted to keep the courts.

The Odessa College Tennis Center locals got their wish in 1999 when the United States Tennis Association (USTA) inaugurated Adopt-A-Court, a public facilities program designed to help communities repair and/or upgrade their tennis courts. Valdez applied and the Odessa College Tennis Center was one of the first facilities to receive an Adopt-A-Court grant.

Today, the center has eight courts bustling with activity, including USA Tennis pathway programs and wheelchair tennis exhibitions featuring 1999 International Tennis Federation Wheelchair Tennis World Champion Stephen Welch. It's not out of the question for the college to reinstate its tennis program. Valdez even envisions a day when the Odessa College Tennis Center might expand to as many as 20 courts.

"We've been really active," Valdez says. "In fact, so active that a lot of the men who play on Saturday morning have expressed concern that they have to make reservations for court time. That's a good problem to have."

The rebirth of the Odessa College Tennis Center is one of many examples of the value of the USTA's Adopt-A-Court program to public tennis courts and to the continued growth of tennis in this country. Former USTA Technical Committee Chair Steven Champlin, who worked closely with the U.S. Tennis Court and Track Builders Association (USTC&TBA) to get the program off the ground, calls Adopt-A-Court "an absolutely, undoubted success."

"The entire effort brings attention to the popularity of tennis," Champlin says.

Says Mike Carter, USTA Texas Section director of Community Development, "A lot of associations were really feeling the crunch (of people coming back to tennis). Making the unusable facilities usable relieves a lot of the crunch."

Nationwide, there are thousands of tennis courts in need of repair. Consider, during the tennis boom of the mid-70s, courts were being built at a pace of up to 8,000 courts a year. Experts estimate the useful life of a tennis court to be about 20 years, Champlin says. Misuse of tennis courts (e.g., in-line skating) accelerates the natural wear and tear.

The average cost of court renovations for facilities that have applied for Adopt-A-Court grants is more than $19,000. Many municipal park and recreation departments can't afford that, which makes Adopt-A-Court an excellent option.

In the simplest terms, here's how the program works:

* A facility may request grants for court renovations, court equipment and/or amenities up to $2,500 from the USTA, to be matched by the facility's USTA Section office.

* The USTA reviews the grant applications to verify adherence to Adopt-A-Court criteria.

* Facilities chosen to receive grants must use the funds for the reasons requested and within the calendar year.

"We tend to focus on (court) surface renovations rather than amenities," says Peggy Welch Beard, the former USTC&TBA chair who now chairs the USTA Technical Committee subcommittee on Adopt-A-Court. "It's important to get the court back into play."

In its first two and a half years, the Adopt-A-Court program has done as much as possible with a relatively limited budget, with the USTA issuing 39 grants through March 2001. However, with the National Park Service appropriating $28.9 million for the Urban Park and Recreation Recovery (UPARR) program for fiscal year 2001, current USTA Technical Committee Chair Lex Kessler envisions the potential for Adopt-A-Court to issue 20 to 30 grants per year, almost double it's current pace.

"We got it (Adopt-A-Court) off the ground," says Kessler, president of Indoor Courts of America. "We're now going to be leading a multi-million dollar property that is not going to be funded all by the USTA.

"... We can't do enough fast enough for Adopt-A-Court."

Andre Christopher is senior writer for the United States Tennis Association.