Rally to Energize Tennis in Your Community.

The USA Tennis Program Pathway has been immensely successful throughout the country. By year's end, another 250,000 people will have joined the 464,000 who started playing tennis and are crowding the nation's courts since the pathway was rolled out in 1998.

But incorporating the USA Tennis Program Pathway into your services might not be the one-shot solution to revitalizing tennis in your community.

Just before the launch of the USA Tennis Program Pathway, tennis in Omaha, Neb., was in a bit of crisis -- not because of weaknesses in programming or resources. The Omaha Tennis Association (OTA) had suitable program offerings for the public. The Omaha Parks, Recreation and Public Property Department staffed and maintained its tennis facilities. But the two entities, while not acrimonious, were not in sync.

"It just wasn't going well," says Larry Foster, director of the Omaha Parks, Recreation and Public Property Department. "Tennis was floundering."

But rather than ignore the problem, the city and the OTA attacked it head on. They held a task force summit, in which they agreed to combine the city's tennis operations with those of the OTA and operate as an enterprise fund.

This way, whatever revenues raised by city tennis operations stayed in tennis, rather than going into the city's general fund. In addition, the city hired former Creighton University tennis coach Ed Hubbs to be the tennis coordinator, recognizing the need to have a knowledgeable tennis person working for the city to run this enterprise.

Tennis Rally Called

In practice, what the city of Omaha and the Omaha Tennis Association did was hold a "Community Tennis Rally," as they are called by the United States Tennis Association under the USA Tennis Plan for Growth. These rallies are the logical starting point for any community that wants to jump start tennis locally.

It certainly worked for the city of Omaha. In September, the city had the grand opening for Harry and Gail Koch Family Tennis Center at Tranquility Park, a 16-court complex that will grow to 24 courts when Phase II is completed in the spring. These courts are in addition to the eight indoor courts at the Hanscom-Brandeis Indoor Tennis Center and the 15 courts at Dewey Park. Tennis revenues for this year alone are projected to increase more than six percent -- without any increase in fees.

"In the past three years," Foster says, "we're probably doing the best at growing tennis of anyone in the nation. The community is energized, as evidenced by the $1 million they raised for the new tennis center to go with the $2.5 million from the city."

Says James Farber, a former OTA president and a member of Omaha Tennis 2000, which coordinated the private fund-raising drive through the Omaha Community Foundation, "We feel real good about what we've done. It's a great way to get the sport back on its feet and where it should be, with families getting involved and because of the health benefits."

In fact, Farber says, if the city of Omaha and the tennis community hadn't united, it would have taken another rive to 10 years to complete the Koch Family Tennis Center. "Assuming we had gotten the bond issue," he added.

Hubbs says he often gets calls from other municipal park and recreation officials interested in implementing a Tennis Enterprise Fund setup. It is then that he realizes what the tennis community in Omaha has been able to accomplish. "I'm so close to it I don't get a chance to sit back and see," he says. "I'm always trying to see what's next."