This is the second installment of a two-part series exploring the playing facilities for the Duke men's and women's varsity tennis teams.
Five years ago, when the Duke women's tennis team was recruiting Wendy Lyons, the Blue Devil coaches bragged to the Ohio high school star about their school's combination of strong academics and a high-caliber tennis program. The coaches also showed off Duke's 2,000-seat outdoor tennis stadium, which was completed for the Olympic Festival in 1987.
While Lyons was impressed with what Duke had to offer, she did have one question: What happens when it rains or it is too cold to play tennis outdoors? At the time, the answer seemed simple.
"I was told that the plans for an indoor facility were underway when I was being recruited," Lyons said. "I was under the impression that it would be started by my junior year."
Lyons, a two-time All-American, graduated from the University last May, but despite extensive discussion and planning on many fronts, Duke's campus still has no indoor tennis courts, and there is still no definite timetable for the construction of an on-campus indoor tennis facility. Currently, the men's and women's varsity tennis teams practice in the Intramural Building on West Campus and at the Chapel Hill Tennis Club when there is inclement weather.
Over the past 10 years, the Board of Trustees, the Recreational Facilities Task Force and the Department of Athletics have discussed including indoor tennis courts as a part of a student recreational facility. But although renovations to the Memorial Gymnasium on East Campus began in January and there are plans to begin construction of a new recreational facility on West Campus within the next year, little substantial progress has been made regarding indoor tennis courts.
"It is not too dissimilar from where it was three years ago, five years ago or 10 years ago," said John Pearce, the University architect.
When the student recreational facilities project was submitted to the trustee committee on Buildings and Grounds in February of 1994, four indoor tennis courts were included in the plan, according to Young Trustee Kevin Mullen. The Board of Trustees approved the $25 million proposal, which included a $5 million renovation to Memorial Gym and a $20 million West Campus facility. An additional $5 million was allotted for the Cameron Annex, an addition to Duke's basketball arena.
For the past two years, University and athletic department officials have struggled to raise the money for the new recreational facilities. So far, Duke has raised about $15 million for this project. Because this is substantially less than what the expected cost was and because inflation has slightly increased the facility's price tag, the Recreational Facilities Task Force was forced to rethink the plan for the West Campus student recreational facility. The task force, which includes two students and a variety of Duke administrators, had to decide whether to begin construction before all of the funding was secured or to wait until more money was raised to begin building the recreational facility on West Campus.
"There is a real interest in making sure we understand the financing of this pretty completely before we go ahead with it," said Tallman Trask, the University's executive vice president and the head of the Recreational Facilities Task Force. "That's where the tradeoff is. There was a conversation a year or so ago about what we really needed, and clearly we have a substantial deficit in recreation facilities. The tradeoff is then do we wait five or six years and try to raise the whole amount, if we can ever do that, or do we make something available to students sooner rather than later."
Because the Levine Science Research Center was not fully funded when it was completed last year, University officials have been leery of breaking ground on other construction projects, including student recreational facilities, before they are confident that the money to build them will be available.
"The LSRC shows us that we have to be realistic when we are taking on these projects," said junior Jason Goode, the Duke Student Government vice president for facilities and athletics, who also is a member of the Recreational Facilities Task Force. "It is not good to build something if it will hurt the University and the undergraduate students by putting a strain on them [financially] and possibly raising tuition."
But the members of the task force were concerned about the ever-rising costs of the project and the currently poor quality of athletic facilities on campus. Consequently, they decided to build the West Campus student recreational facility in two phases, the first of which will likely begin within the next year. The indoor tennis facility was cut from the initial phase of this proposal, making it unlikely that there will be any indoor tennis courts on Duke's campus in the immediate future.
In deciding which facets of the recreational facility were the most immediate needs of the University community, the task force considered both the priorities of the athletic department and the interest of students. The Student Recreational Sports and Fitness Survey, which was conducted in 1993, was an important resource which the task force used in prioritizing the various features of the student recreational facility. According to that survey, weight training equipment, fitness machines, space for aerobics and basketball courts were the areas which students felt should be the highest priorities in the recreational facility. Indoor tennis courts were nowhere to be found in that survey, even though students mentioned 19 other activities for which they would likely use the facility.
"There were a lot of things that you would think would rank that didn't rank," Pearce said. "That doesn't mean that people wouldn't use [indoor tennis courts]. The question would be if you're a tennis player, would you use the courts more than an aerobics facility or a weight room or a basketball court."
Both of the students on the Recreational Facilities Task Force, Goode and DSG President Peggy Cross, said that they believe that the indoor tennis courts would be used primarily by the athletic department and that they would therefore not have have a significant impact on most Duke undergraduates' recreational activities. According to Cross, the priorities suggested by the student interest survey are an accurate representation of the most pressing recreational needs of undergraduates.
Although indoor tennis courts were not listed as a high priority among Duke's undergraduate population, the athletic department feels that it is important for the Blue Devils' varsity men's and women's tennis programs, both of which are ranked in the top 10 nationally, to have an indoor facility for their practices.
"For us intercollegiately, it is a high priority," said Joe Alleva, Duke's Associate Director of Athletics. "Because we have great men's and women's tennis teams, it is something that they really need."
And even though indoor tennis courts were not listed in the student interest survey conducted three years ago, athletic department officials are confident that an indoor tennis facility would be heavily used by many members of the University community other than the members of the men's and women's varsity tennis teams.
"I think the indoor tennis courts will be a benefit to all students," said Tom Butters, Duke's Director of Athletics. "Obviously the tennis teams won't be using the tennis courts all the time, so it should give students, faculty and staff an opportunity to play tennis inside."
Since the indoor tennis facility is no longer a part of the initial phase of the West Campus student recreational facility project, the task force and the athletic department have begun to explore the various alternatives for indoor tennis courts on campus. As a short-term solution, the IM Building will be renovated this summer to provide better lighting and a resurfaced floor. These renovations,howver, will not compensate for the building's low ceiling and confined space, which make it nearly impossible for the building to be used for more than the most basic of tennis drills.
There are several possibilities for a more permanent indoor tennis facility. The first of these, which was proposed several years ago, is to build a multi-purpose gym in the new student recreational facility so that the same area could be used for tennis, basketball and roller hockey. According to Mullen, this would allow the space to be used effectively virtually the entire time the recreational facility would be open.
"The real problem you get into is the flooring," Trask said. "Basketball courts have wood floors, and you can't play tennis on wood floors. You can end up with some kind of composition of floor that is sort of OK for both, but not really perfect for either."
This solution would also not be the athletic department's first choice because it would probably provide only two tennis courts, and it might not be a substantial improvement over the IM Building's facilities. This proposal is no longer being seriously considered.
A second possibility would be to enclose a few of Duke's existing tennis courts. This would be the easiest and least expensive solution to getting indoor tennis courts on campus. The courts at the Duke Faculty Club would be the most likely candidates to be enclosed since they were built in pairs, Trask said. The problem with this proposal is that these courts might not be able to have air conditioning.
Another option would be to include four indoor courts as a modular addition to the new West Campus student recreational facility, following the original plans which were approved by the Board of Trustees in 1994. One of the problems with this plan is that the courts are cramped into a tight space in the blueprints for the facility, meaning that the varsity tennis teams would face some of the same problems with which they currently must contend in the IM Building. Furthermore, if the indoor tennis courts were integrated into the student recreational facility, there would be aesthetic considerations involved in their construction. Specifically, the courts would probably be housed in a facility constructed in Gothic stone like most of the other buildings on Duke's West Campus. Building a tennis facility out of this material would prove expensive.
"That's part of the problem," Trask said. "[The proposed West Campus student recreational facility] is right on the historic core of the west end of the original campus. Tennis courts, just given their size and their volume to hit lobs and so forth, are difficult buildings to make out of stone."
Butters has suggested another possibility which he feels might better serve the needs of the varsity tennis teams.
"I really see the likelihood of tennis courts being located elsewhere and not being a modular part of the West Campus facility," Butters said. "This would be less expensive because of the aesthetics and the location. This could mean that we would be able to build more courts at a lower cost."
Because the cost of this proposal would be substantially lower than the $1 million per court which is estimated for indoor tennis courts on main West Campus, it might be feasible to build six courts in a separate indoor tennis facility. With six courts, the tennis teams would be able to move matches indoors if darkness or weather conditions made it necessary. This would also ensure that both the men's and women's teams would always have adequate practice time.
The indoor tennis facility recently built at William & Mary is a model of the best case scenario for a collegiate tennis complex. That building has six courts with seating and locker rooms. Duke women's head coach Jody Hyden feels that it would be beneficial for the University's indoor facility to have seating since it would allow spectators to watch matches there. Overall, Hyden said that he hopes that careful consideration is given to whatever facility Duke ends up building.
"There will only be one indoor facility ever built here," Hyden said. "I hope that they do it right and that it's first class, so that we don't ever have to look back and say that we should have done this or done that."
William & Mary was able to build its indoor tennis facility because two donors contributed virtually all the money that was needed to complete the complex. Mark McCormick, the president of International Management Group, and his wife, Betsy Nagelson, donated upwards of $5 million for the project.
In order for a similar facility to be built at Duke, some donor would likely need to make a sizable financial contribution. While several tennis players' parents have offered to help fund a tennis facility, Duke has yet to find a single donor with enough financial resources to make a state-of-the-art indoor tennis center feasible. The athletic department is still actively seeking funding for this, Alleva said.
Butters, Trask and Pearce all emphasized that none of the proposals for an indoor tennis facility has been finalized. Until the funding is available, there will probably be little progress made on this front. And while nobody would guarantee a timetable for the completion of on-campus tennis courts, athletic department officials are confident that the facility will be built within the next decade.
"I would think that [indoor tennis courts] would be in place and in use five years from now," Butters said.
For the Duke men's and women's varsity tennis programs, an indoor facility could not come soon enough.
"This would be the final step in making us a big-time program," men's head coach Jay Lapidus said. "Competing with the other schools facility-wise would be a big step for us, and it would help us in getting to that level of winning national championships.
"I'm very happy here, and I'm very happy with the support we've gotten from the athletic department. They've done a lot for us, and I just hope it will go one step further. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed."
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