TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Tennis and pickleball players who use the courts at the Tejas Pradip Patel HC Tennis Center are asking the college to keep the facility open until a replacement is ready, as the Rays plan a new ballpark on the site.<\/p>\n
Players said the center has long served local athletes, with 23 tennis courts and 15 pickleball courts.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we\u2019ve been playing here for the last five years,\u201d said tennis player Alex Bourdiaux, who said the number of courts helped draw him and his wife, Whitney Yoder Bourdiaux, to the facility. \u201cWe can come here and be part of a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other players said they have used the center for much longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been playing here about 14 years,\u201d pickleball player Rick Detres said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve actually been playing tennis here for over 40 years,\u201d tennis player Michelle Verdisco said.<\/p>\n
Dana Andrews, a past president of the United States Tennis Association\u2019s Florida Chapter, told Spectrum News earlier this year that the center is home to 3% of Hillsborough County\u2019s tennis courts but sees 26% of its tennis play.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are so many high schools and women\u2019s leagues and men\u2019s leagues and mixed leagues that play out of this facility,\u201d Verdisco said. \u201cIt\u2019s constantly busy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Players said they are concerned nearby facilities will not be able to handle the demand if the Hillsborough College center closes before a replacement opens.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey cannot absorb the amount of people that stop playing here in other facilities in and around town,\u201d Detres said.<\/p>\n
Rays CEO Ken Babby said in March that the team is committed to building a new, world-class tennis facility as part of the project. HC President Dr. Ken Atwater reaffirmed that commitment earlier this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have any details, timelines, and so forth yet, but we are working on timelines,\u201d Atwater said. \u201cWe are working to talk about when, but we will have even a better facility than we currently have now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Players said the lack of details about the replacement facility is part of their concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s that money going to come from? Who\u2019s going to pay for it when we have it all right here, all ready to go?\u201d Verdisco said. \u201cI mean, it seems like a waste of public resource to tear this down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yoder Bourdiaux said she and her husband are fans of all of Tampa Bay’s professional sports teams but want their sport and community preserved.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe support all the teams, have all of the jerseys, but we\u2019re also athletes, and, you know, our sport that we play is a really important part of our community here and our lifestyle here, too,\u201d she said. \u201cIt would just be really sad if that was taken away from us here.\u201d<\/p>\n
An online petition to keep the facility open had 425 signatures as of Friday night. Players said the center has told them this will be the last season they can play there, and the season ends in November.<\/p>\n
The group said it has met with Rays representatives, who listened to their concerns but did not provide information about where a new center would be or when it could open. Players said United States Tennis Association representatives also attended and said they would help get the facility going.<\/p>\n
Babby previously said Al Lopez Park could be a possible location and that the issue could be worked out during talks on the community benefits agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Tennis and pickleball players who use the courts at the Tejas Pradip Patel HC Tennis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[276,115,2718,135,137,136,835],"class_list":["post-411186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-news","tag-sarah-blazonis","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}