District  Awarded $5000 Matching Grant from the United States Tennis Association 

 On Friday, July 15 Orcas Island Park and Rec District (OIPRD) was notified they had been awarded a $5000 matching grant from the United States Tennis Association (USTA) for the purposes of refurbishing and re-lining 2 of the existing Buck Park tennis courts.

“This grant was just one of a series of dominos that had to fall into place to allow our community to refurbish and reenergize a public tennis program for Orcas,” said OIPRD Board Chair Martha Farish. “It took Carl deBoor and the Community Foundation donating the cost of insurance; it took the Port of Orcas’s willingness to loan OIPRD interim funding; it took Attorney Adina Cunningham’s willingness to help us both come to agreement and it took the school district’s willingness to have OIPRD take the lead on refurbishment of the courts.”

The matching grant from USTA, along with interim funding from the Port of Orcas will allow the courts to be refurbished in August 2011 instead of waiting until August 2013 when tax distributions would have enabled OIPRD to do the required work. Because of tennis court construction restraints, refurbishment in the Northwest is usually restricted to August when the weather is hot enough.

Technical assistance provided by USTA was part of this grant process and will result in new regulation surfaces for the existing two courts as well as re-lining to preserve existing adult tennis lines. An added feature is lining for Quick Start Tennis.  Quick Start Tennis (occasionally referred to as 10 and Under) is a national tennis emphasis by USTA that offers smaller regulation court size, easier instruction and even tournaments to whole new groups of ages (younger and older) that may have previously believed developing tennis skills was out of reach.

“Parks and Rec is about people getting out and recreating,, said Janet Brownell, Orcas Island School District Board Chair. “Through this community effort, and the promise of free USTA training clinics in Quick Start for coaches, school personnel and community volunteers, Orcas will have encouraged greater participation by every age group in tennis in our community.”

There are three regulation size courts at Buck Park—two fenced courts and an unfenced poured slab to the north of the existing courts.  Insufficient funds when Buck Park was originally created led to the decision to partially finish off the third court. “Hoping to get lucky, OIPRD got bids for and applied to USTA to finish off all three courts at the same time.  USTA awarded us their maximum.  The Port gave us what they could, but altogether we just didn’t have the financial horses—or enough lead time– to get the last $6000 required to get it all done all at once,” reports Farish.

“The work has to be done by a USTA approved contractor and the best choice was Mid Pac Construction of Kirkland, WA who turned out to have done successful private court work on Orcas in the past, “ said Joe Ciskowski, representative of Orcas Tennis Association which is credited with spearheading the entire refurbishment campaign in January of 2011.

OIPRD, OISD and Mid Pac Construction will immediately begin preparations for the work to take place the week of August 25, 2011. Upon completion of the work the courts will be locked and unavailable for 4-5 days to allow the surfaces to “cure”.

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