After seventeen months worth of planning to renovate the tennis courts at the University of Rhode Island, resurfacing is finally complete.
While renovations were set to be finished in July of last year, delays due to the weather and limited amount of time to let the paint set prevented work from being completed for about six months.
URI’s varsity and club tennis teams, who have relocated to off-campus courts over the past year for their matches and practices, will finally regain their home courts in the coming days.
URI’s club tennis team president Gianna Wadowski and her team had been holding out hope for their home courts to be finished since last summer.
“It hasn’t been ideal, but we’ve definitely adapted and I think that speaks for the magnitude of the team,” Wadowski said. “Making sure that we’ve maintained positivity has been the biggest thing.”
Those adaptations included traveling to nearby middle school courts to practice and play matches. This not only affected the club team regarding transportation, but also presented a sense of imposition on the tennis community outside of URI.
“Being respectful to the town is our biggest priority because it’s a community and we all love playing, so we want to keep that community aspect and bring people together,” Wadowski said.
“We don’t want to infringe on anyone else’s opportunity to play tennis, but at the same time we just love tennis and we love playing. It’s been a balancing act of making sure that they play the sport that they love as well.”
Staying positive, the URI club tennis team was prepared for the worst, bringing the group closer as a result, according to Wadowski.
“The biggest takeaway for the team has been being all in this together,” Wadowski said. “The support from our team and the town is there.”
Despite best efforts from Coordinator of Club Sports, Joe Wilbur, to gather information, Wadowski claimed that the team received “one-sided” communication throughout the process.
Jodi Hawkins, Director of Campus Recreation, credited Brian Boesch, Manager of Turf Grass and Athletic Grounds, with pushing the project forward.
“Brian really took the lead, but I was constantly in communication trying to get the updates on where we stood with the process because like I said, the process just took a really long time,” Hawkins said. “[Brian] really tried to expedite the new company in there as quickly as possible so that our teams could be out there and to play.”
Despite the winter conditions preventing any work from being done for months on end, the University was out of the loop on the plans for the courts.
Hawkins elaborated that the first company to take the project did a “horrific job,” rendering the courts “unplayable.” This caused the university to step in with a legal counsel to reconcile the first company before bringing in a second company to redo the courts entirely.
“We didn’t want to combine the two projects, so a completely different company came in to finish up the job that the first company was unable to do to our satisfaction,” Hawkins explained.
The second company was officially hired this past June, but had to undergo the proper paperwork before they could proceed with the renovations.
Not only was Hawkins “very pleased” with the job the second company did to the tennis courts, but there were additional lines painted for pickleball players that she’s sure will “accommodate everyone’s needs and hobbies.”
The idea to paint pickleball lines on the recreational courts was not in the original renovation plan.
“The second company that came in had told us that they don’t paint tennis courts anymore without adding pickleball lines,” Hawkins said. “It’s a common thing right now to add to tennis courts. It quickly became evident that pickleball was a growing sport.”
It’s clear that URI has an interest in pickleball, as a club team of the sport was formed just last year.
“We are very excited that we have pickleball as part of our club and intramural program,” Hawkins said. “It’s phenomenal for the students and now they’ll finally have their home courts to play on and practice on. It is a huge deal to have these facilities on campus for the students to have easy access.”
It is expected that the varsity and club tennis and pickleball teams will begin practicing and playing on the newly refurbished tennis courts within the next couple of days.