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Sharing Your Successes

By Peter Francesconi

February was a busy time on Hilton Head Island. This tennis hotbed became even hotter when the USTA’s Community Tennis Development Workshop was held there, and immediately after that, the PTR International Tennis Symposium.

If you’ve read this column in the past, you probably know that I have a soft spot for the USTA’s CTDW. That workshop is probably the best thing the USTA does every year in terms of promoting grassroots tennis and giving CTAs, teaching pros, facility managers and others the tools and ideas they need to increase participation — which, by the way, increases their business, too.

The hundreds of community tennis leaders who were at the CTDW heard from experts in many fields, from financial management, to marketing, to developing champions, to liability, to website issues, to current grassroots programs and programming, and much more.

In many instances, participants heard from the people who run successful grassroots programs. For instance, in one seminar, one of the presenters was Becky Blue, the president of the Brandon (S.D.) Tennis Association, which won the USTA’s CTA of the Year Award. She had some wonderful and practical advice on getting a CTA’s the board of directors involved in fund-raising for the long-term.

I can almost guarantee that if you’re a facility manager, teaching pro, coach, or involved in your local CTA or other tennis group, you’ll probably come away from the CTDW with a dozen ideas on how to increase tennis participation, run your business more efficiently, get the most out of programming, and much more. And with all the networking that naturally occurs there, you’ll take back dozens of excellent connections.

That’s the beauty of the CTDW — it brings together the people who have a passion for community tennis, and it focuses on sharing ideas and practices that work. And it all fits in with USTA President Lucy Garvin’s emphasis on teamwork (“One Team, One Goal”), because ultimately, in this economy, we all have to pull together to keep tennis moving forward.

Peter Francesconi Editorial Director

See all articles by Peter Francesconi

About the Author

Peter Francesconi is editorial director of Tennis Industry magazine.

From the April 2009 issue
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