TENNIS COMMITTEE – 2021 YEAR END REPORT TO THE BOARD
March 9, 2021
The Tennis Committee took up the covid challenge and worked hard to provide some great tennis activities for players this year. We did our best to keep safety in mind with good communication, plenty of hand sanitizer, and most importantly player cooperation. It ’ s been a fun year with lots of good tennis despite the covid cloud. We had to abandon the monthly Horse Race and most Mixers, but added some fun new events with League play and a Mixed Ladder. We have four teams participating in a mixed league and the competition has been fierce. With just two weeks left to play there is only a 2.5 point spread between the top three teams. No prizes on the line – just bragging rights! There ’ s only one match left to play in the Mixed Ladder, and although conceptualized as more of a social tennis opportunity, it too has become a battle. Tennis players are competitive people! Next season we hope to see the USTA and Desert Leagues back in business, with perhaps a few new ORPS teams to allow more players a league team experience. The long-standing men ’ s and ladies “ Top Gun ” programs operated as well. We had a new coordinator on the Ladies side who managed to add to the number of participants this year. On the men ’ s side, the numbers were down overall, but some new players too. With regular players returning next season, the men are hoping to reach their goal of 10 courts next year. Brian Farrell continued to volunteer his time and energy to offer weekly Novice Clinics throughout much of the season. It’s so great to see his passion continue year after year . Brian is truly a great ambassador for tennis and for ORPS. Our Tuesday evening tennis faltered a bit when we went into the purple tier with COVID-19. Hopefully this is something that will come back next season . It’s a great social tennis event, and also a good way to support Bella Roma as well, as we would often have 15 – 20 people staying for dinner after play. We made some changes to the Hold My Court program (our online reservation system) to allow up to four people to book a single court. The impetus for this was to have everyone book all time on court so that we would have a record of who played with whom in the event contact tracing would be required. In adapting this change, we realized there may be some added benefit to individuals booking court time, so the committee will give some consideration to continuing with this going forward. We had 41 new registrations for HMC this season. Some people who registered were not new players, just new to HMC, but we did add 25 new players to our Tennis Community this season. The Tennis Committee adapted well to the ZOOM meeting format. It was nice to give all owners the ability to join in and keep up on things even if they were unable to travel to ORPS this season. It’s great to continue to see new players stepping up to volunteer with our tennis program , either through events, or with our tennis committee. We are happy to have two new committee members beginning their 2-year term in April.
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