President’s Message

Dave Moyer - USPTA Southwest President

Hello Fellow USPTA Professionals, I hope everyone is off to a great start to 2021 as we continue to navigate through the Covid-19 pandemic. Keeping our fingers crossed that the end is near and we can finally get back to some normalcy. As I mentioned in the last newsletter, the one great thing that has come out of the pandemic is the rise of tennis across the Southwest and the country. In that regard, I hope we don’t return to pre-covid normalcy and instead continue to see the increase in participation throughout 2021. One of the fallouts of the pandemic has been the move to virtual meetings and conferences and the USPTA Southwest Division has had to adjust on that front as well. Last May we had to cancel our conference and despite high hopes for an in-person conference this year we unfortunately had to go virtual. The conference takes a lot of planning and preparation and even though there is a chance that in May things will have calmed down enough to do an in-person conference, the planning that goes into it needs to be done early in the year so the decision was made to do everything online this year.

Having said that, Laurie Martin and Amy Badger have done an amazing job putting everything together and I think you all will be very pleased with the slate of speakers and the format. They have been rock stars throughout the process and we owe them a great deal of appreciation. On the technical side, Jack Michalko has been working hard to get everything set up and running smoothly so that we don’t have any issues come May. It has been a lot of work for him to do this and we are very lucky to have Jack as our ED. As part of our conference we usually have an awards ceremony but this year we will just announce the winners. That doesn’t mean that the awards are any less important though and I want to challenge everyone to make sure to take the time to nominate your fellow pros for awards. Let’s make this year’s nominating process the best ever! With all the challenges we have had the past year, we know that tennis is booming so there have to be plenty of viable candidates. Please get those filled out and sent back in so that we can recognize the best of the best in the Southwest!

Looking ahead to the World Conference in Las Vegas, we are still holding out hope that we can make that an in-person conference this year. No decisions have been made yet and the outlook for vaccinations is very positive over the next few months so we shall see. Just like the division conference though, so much planning has to go into it ahead of time that decisions need to be made before it is too late. I would love nothing more than to get to see those of you who are comfortable traveling in-person come September!

Keep up the great work everyone building and promoting our great sport through this tough time. This is an exciting time to be a USPTA professional with all the growth in the game. Continue doing what you do, get signed up for the virtual conference and make sure to nominate, nominate, nominate for the awards!