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Deteriorating Canton High
School tennis courts in need of some love
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Meanwhile, proposed Brown/Billone Tennis Center delayed ~
By Jeffrey
Pickette
Citizen Staff
The tennis
court beside the playground at Canton High School has a crack
splitting the service box, going from one end of the court to
the other. This crack forms a perpendicular angle with another
crack that runs up and down the sideline of the same court.
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This crack
splits the service box in one of the courts.
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Like many of
the cracks found all over the five tennis courts at CHS,
multiple adult-sized fingers can fit in these crevices. Even the
court that may be in the best shape has a large crack that
travels underneath the net, from one side of the court to the
other. This is the only court without a significant crack that
isn’t situated on the baseline or along one of the sidelines or
another major part of the court.
The cracks may
alter the path of a ball and change the competitive flow of a
game, but they may also create some safety hazards that could
render the courts unplayable within a couple of years, according
to CHS athletic director Danny Erickson.
In their
current state, even with the cracks, Erickson said he “never
felt that the courts were unplayable or unsafe.” Both the CHS
boys’ and girls’ tennis teams will play this season as scheduled
at the CHS courts.
Erickson,
however, said he is hoping to raise awareness within the
community that the courts, built more than 20 years ago, are
deteriorating. But, with the school system and the town both
facing budget problems, there is no immediate plan to fix the
courts, which the
Citizen reported last March could cost upwards of
$154,000.
“Through no
criticism of the powers that be that make the decisions on where
the money goes, it’s hard to spend that kind of money in tough
financial times,” Erickson said.
Instead, over
the last five years Erickson has resorted to “band-aid jobs”
that keep the courts “playable,” but he said the courts are
reaching a point where even this won’t be an option.
“Each winter
our cracks get quite a bit bigger, the courts get more uneven,”
Erickson said. “We’re getting to the point where we won’t be
able to choose an intermediate or minor fix; we’ll have to pick
a very expensive total fix.”
Sheila
Conneely, head coach of the girls’ tennis team, said that in the
Hockomock League, only Stoughton’s courts were in worse shape.
“I know I will
stress the importance of playing with more caution, especially
on the courts where sloping and cracks are an issue,” Conneely
wrote in an e-mail to the
Citizen.
Both Erickson
and Superintendent of Schools Dr. John D’Auria emphasized that
while the courts are on CHS property and are used by CHS tennis
teams, this is a “town-wide” issue. The courts are also used by
the Recreation Department and by the general public.
“It’s really
not just a Canton High School athletic department tennis team
issue,” Erickson said. “It’s a community resource; it’s an asset
the community has and we need to make sure we’re taking care of
them.”
“My goal is
not to point fingers financially,” Erickson stressed. “That’s
not it at all.”
Last Friday,
concerned parent Maura Nannery, mother of Micaela, a Hockomock
League all-star player for the girls’ tennis team, met with
Erickson and Conneely to discuss forming a committee to address
the situation.
“We are
looking for all interested community members and will start with
parents of CHS players to form this group to start brainstorming
fundraising ideas and researching the possibilities of grants,”
Nannery wrote in an e-mail.
One possible
solution for the problem has been indefinitely put on hold. Last
April it was reported in the
Citizen that
a year-round tennis facility called the Brown/Billone Tennis
Center (BBTC) would be opening at the corner of North and Pine
streets by this spring. In the article, managing partner Dave
Brown acknowledged the poor condition of the CHS courts and said
the BBTC would be open to helping raise some of the necessary
funds for reconstructing the courts or working out an agreement
where the tennis teams could play part of their season at the
new facility when the CHS courts were being repaired.
In an e-mail
sent to the Citizen,
Brown said the “current banking climate” has made it difficult
to secure funding for the project. Brown said they are
“currently working on getting the entire project funded
privately.”
When funding
is secured, the plan now is to build all eight courts — four
inside a steel structure and four more under an inflated bubble
structure — at the same time. While Brown could not predict when
the BBTC would be opening, he did say they are “still
100-percent committed to getting the club built in Canton.”
As for the CHS
courts, a plan for the Board of Selectmen and School Department
to share the cost of fixing the courts fell through last year.
Plans to fix
the tennis courts are often left unfunded in favor of more
pressing needs for the community — such as the current
joint-proposal from the BOS and the School Department to create
a traffic circle in front of the Luce Elementary School (pending
Zoning Board approval, according to D’Auria.)
“This proposal
had a higher priority for both groups,” D’Auria explained. “The
tennis courts are a very high priority as well, but the safety
concerns, while present, were not quite as high as they are
related to the Luce traffic situation. We are obviously in very
tight financial times, and it is very difficult to meet all our
priorities.”
So for now,
the CHS courts remain in poor shape.
“The push for
new tennis courts is not about aesthetics,” Conneely said.
“It’s about safety.”
March 4, 2010
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