LOVE OF THE GAME

As a sport, tennis has a lot to offer, even a bit of love.

Hoping to make a bigger racquet in the Airdrie sporting community, Chris Simnett has helped spearhead a campaign to bring the little, fuzzy yellow ball to the centre court of attention.

“My goal is pretty simple: just to expose people to tennis. This is a great sport. It’s pretty easy to learn with progressive tennis and you can play it your whole life,” says the long-time tennis player/instructor who came to Airdrie in 2006.

A high-performance junior player in the 1980s (even cataloguing an early-doubles win over Australian and French Open champion Canadian Daniel Nestor), Simnett has kept his foot on the service line.

Because of his history with the game he was approached by Tennis Alberta to become a community champion for the sport and was recognized by Tennis Canada’s development program.

He soon began the Airdrie and District Tennis Association and set in motion Tennis Canada’s Building Tennis Communities (BTC) strategy.

But before anyone could say game, set and match, Simnett’s first obstacle came in finding playable courts.

Officially the City lists six courts in Airdrie including two in Summerhill, two at the tri-school site and four at East Lake Park.

Using the ‘build it and they will play’ line of attack, Simnett worked on the City to acknowledge there was a deficiency in quality courts.

Originally Simnett found the local courts in an unplayable condition with no visible lines, nets rarely hung for the season and asphalt in need of resurfacing and covered in broken glass.

“I had lots of conversations with people at the City … and they said no one cares about tennis here,” he says. “My argument was you don’t see any tennis because no one wants to play on those courts. They’re not inviting. People would just rather not play than play on those courts, myself included.”

Coincidentally the City was about to host the Alberta 55 Plus Games in 2009, with tennis being one of the major physical activities planned.

Hitting a winner for the City, planners decided the East Lake Park courts would get a much-needed facelift for the event, and a boost for tennis after the games. This solved the chicken-and-egg dilemma with players now having a reason to pick up their racquets.

“They built the new courts, and they are awesome courts, first class. Now they’re seeing the courts are busy,” Simnett says.

Supplied with free equipment, including 50 racquets, low-compression teaching tennis balls, six progressive tennis nets and all materials to run a program, Simnett implemented the Try, Learn, Play to Compete program, hosting two indoor events in November and March.

Apart from teaching the strange scoring system that uses such numbers as 15, 30, 40 and love (for zero), Simnett is offering lesson programs for under-eight, under-10, under-12 and open categories.

“My initial thought was ‘open’ would be anyone 13 and all the way up. I’m not going to exclude anyone. If a 50-year-old wants to join up, come on out,” adds Simnett, who has been planning with the City to co-ordinate an adult social night.

Despite worldwide admiration for such players as Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, who are breaking records and bringing lots of new tennis fans to the sport, popularity is still a question in Canada.

Always a niche sport in North America, the greatest fault may lie in the stigma that tennis is a sport for the rich country-club member. In truth, tennis can be one of the most cost-effective physical activities.

“I’ve had lots of discussions with Tennis Alberta about this, [which] still fights the whole country-club [attitude] – you have to wear all white, you have to be quiet, it’s a very gentile, rich guy [sport]. It still battles that image that you have to be a millionaire to play and belong to a club,” says Simnett.

“You don’t. I got to be a pretty decent-level player just learning to play on public courts with my dad who happened to be a really good player and taught me how to play. It’s as simple as that.”

Simnett is hoping to attract players with that straightforward approach and teach youngsters a love for the game, not just produce high-performance competition players.

This swings with Tennis Canada’s goal to assemble 100 healthy tennis communities across the country.

The local program, which runs from May 26 to June 19, will conclude with a Rogers Rookie Tour event on June 26-27. The non-elimination tournament will offer T-shirts, water bottles, prizes, camaraderie and friendly competition.

Getting that first point across the net is the initial step in helping tennis become a winner in Airdrie.

“We are right at the beginning, the infancy of the sport [in Airdrie],” says Simnett. “We want everyone to play and want tennis participation to rise. We think it has huge benefits for each community – social and economic benefits, health benefits, [even] lower crime rates.” life