In Consideration

Notes from the desk of Kevin McClure, Director of Tennis, Sport Fit Bowie

Sport Fit Bowie has had success as a tennis and fitness club. The tennis programs have been successful and the membership active enough that our tennis programs have continued to be offered even as the marketplace has shrunk and the economy pinched.

As you can intuit from the reduced number of indoor courts offered in our area, it is easier to use the square footage that tennis requires for more profitable ventures. Even the public facilities are downsizing their original estimates for the number of new tennis courts they will be constructing. Simply put, tennis is an expensive sport to maintain due to the amount of space required to construct it and the low number of players that can utilize that space at any one time.

Sport Fit Bowie has been able to keep its tennis court fees and its membership rates low, in part, due to the size of the club and the many different programs that go into supporting the facility. Fortunately, the clubs success has allowed tennis to continue to thrive here.

Within the last few years, we've seen the reduction of private indoor tennis court time in the area. Brigade increased its restrictions on non-authorized personnel to better fit its mission statement. Big Vanilla dropped from 6 courts to just 2 courts and increased its court fees in order to keep tennis available to its membership at the fitness membership rate (plus the court fees $40/hr+). And recently, with the Severn Valley Tennis and Fitness Clubs purchase by API, the removal of more private tennis courts in the area.

We, at Sport Fit Bowie, have increasingly been asked to take on additional responsibilities for the tennis community. These requests include running tennis tournaments, league play for P.G. and AnneArundelCounty, USTA Teams looking for make-up match play indoors, Junior Play Days, and other special events such as Saturday night parties, NTRP Level competitions, additional internal leagues, drills and clinics. Whew! And as you know, the increase in members at Sport Fit Bowie has also increased the demand for court time.

Decisions have been made over the past few months to try and balance our interest in the membership and the tennis community as a whole. We appreciate everyone's patience on these issues. As always, our goal is to provide the best quality tennis program at a great value.

There have also been many decisions made to protect your interests as members. I'll try to outline some of those below. I seem to answer these questions every day, yet I still don't reach all of you, so my hope is that this letter will answer many of your questions, comments and concerns.

• We try to keep in mind that some random court time should be left open, however, we do serve our membership with league play (95+% of which are members and have priority in the programs), drills, clinics and privates.
• We chose to limit the number of leagues on any given night to no more than 2. Therefore, Mon-Fri there is typically one league from 7-8:30 and another from 8:30-10pm. Yes, there are a couple leagues that have taken 4 courts.
• We chose to limit the number of leagues on Saturday to no more than 2. Currently, there is only one.
• This 2011-2012 season the USTA Teams were not allowed to book tennis courts at Sport Fit Bowie for their make-up matches.
  • Last year, we allowed registered USTA Team Captains to book courts online for make-up matches (3 court minimum to insure that only "matches" were being played and not just occasional bookings).
• This 2011-2012 season no "external" leagues were allowed to use court time Monday thru Thursday or Saturday.
• This 2011-2012 season the only time slots used for "external" leagues were:
  • Friday evening 9:30-11pm
  • Sunday morning 8-9:30am
  • Sunday evening 7-10pm
    • Last year the leagues started as early as 6pm and the club elected to remain open until 10pm this year so that only 2 hours of late evening time from 7-9pm were used.
  • These and many more leagues were searching for a location to play
• This 2011-2012 season no USTA tournaments were held at Sport Fit Bowie.
  • Many of our members question why we don't run any tournaments at Sport Fit. The number one answer is that our courts are very busy and we prefer to leave the courts available to our membership (this can mean programming as well as random court time).
  • The tennis community lost a location that ran quite a few special events and tournaments. We are attempting to balance our interest in taking care of our members with also participating with the tennis community as a whole. A responsibility we take seriously so that tennis in our area has a chance to thrive.
• This 2011-2012 season we had internal league changes:
  • We added 2 leagues to Mon/Wed daytime courts 9:30-1pm. 3 courts each.
  • We added 1 league to Tue/Thu daytime courts 10-11:30.
  • We added 2 leagues to Thu evening 7-8:30 & 8-9:30
    • A couple years back we had the same number of courts taken by a different league not running now.
  • We added 1 league to Saturday and 1 league to Sunday
  • We reduced by 1 league on Wednesday and used part of it for expansion in another league on Tuesday, rather than taking up all the courts on Tuesday.
• Until recently, our junior court time was the same as last year. In January we did expand our reach due to the success of the programs.
• We added the ability to book 30 min slots.
• We have been able to retain the "free" day-of reservations, the only club in the area to have this option. The majority of court bookings are still being made at no charge.

Please feel free to contact me or Scott Wade by email at sportfittennis@aol.com or by calling the club at 301.262.4553