Fred DeVictor usually can be found swatting balls over the net Saturday mornings at the Lawrence Tennis Center.

DeVictor, head of the city’s parks and recreation department, admits Lawrence’s major tennis facility has numerous surface blemishes, but stresses all eight are playable.

“They aren’t real bad,” DeVictor said of the courts, “but they aren’t real new, either.”

Real new, they aren’t. The facility is a quarter-century old. How bad the courts are, however, depends on who you ask.

“We’re embarrassed when Kansas City and Topeka people come to LTC for league matches,” said Cynthia Eubanks, a longtime Lawrence tennis player. “It’s in bad shape.”

A visual check of the eight courts at the facility south of Lawrence High on 21st Street showed varying degrees of cracking. A fissure on the northeasternmost court looks like it was caused by an earthquake. The court to its south has several, although smaller, cracks.

Every one of the LTC courts has some kind of damage.

‘Pretty bad shape’

“It’s pretty cracked up, more than any I’ve seen,” said Joel Rook, a Lawrence resident who plays at LTC on a semi-regular basis. “It’s in pretty bad shape. I’m sure nine out of 10 people would tell you the same thing.”

Nine out of 10 people probably wouldn’t agree, however, on what call to make when a shot strikes one of the cracks during competition.

Marshall Rawley, 12, walks past a crack in a court at the Lawrence Tennis Center. Tennis enthusiasts in Lawrence have complained that the courts at LTC are in desperate need of repair, but the city says the courts are at least playable.

“Usually, we just play it,” Rook said, “but others call it ‘let’ because it alters the trajectory.”

DeVictor says the city has enough money to repair cracks every other year, but that a patch job undertaken last year didn’t pan out.

“We tried a new product,” he said, “and some of those cracks are back.”

Engineers will tell you cracks in tennis courts are inevitable, but LTC’s are, in some cases, more like crevices.

Built in 1978

In early 1978, there was no Lawrence Tennis Center, just four courts without lights at the location – much like the mini-facilities found today in Veterans Park and Perry Park, to name a couple of places around the city available to recreational netters.

Then, federal matching money became available. The city, DeVictor said, couldn’t match the federal grant, so it went to the school board, which agreed to foot a quarter of the cost.

And so the Lawrence Tennis Center opened in 1979 at a price tag, according to DeVictor, of about $150,000. The federal government covered half of that nut while the city and the school district split the other $75,000 or so.

Today, LTC still is jointly administered. Lawrence High’s boys and girls teams use it for practice and for matches. At other times, it is available for lessons, tournaments and recreational play.

At least one person thinks LTC is a splendid facility, although his endorsement carries a hint of sarcasm.

“I think it’s great place,” Free State High tennis coach Jon Renberger said. “It’s great compared to what we have at Free State. We have four courts and Lawrence High has eight.”

Renberger agrees the LTC surface is sub-standard, but adds “they have lights and rest rooms. I’ve always been envious of that.”

Free State’s courts, built when the school opened in 1997, weren’t in the best shape, Renberger said, but they were due for resurfacing next summer. And it’s possible, he added, a fifth court would be constructed.

No carbon copy

Renberger and others with a Free State tennis agenda have approached the city about building a Lawrence Tennis Center West on the FSHS grounds.

“Our courts are used all the time,” Renberger said, “and we’d hope for the same deal Lawrence High has, but the city says there’s not enough interest and we’re too far away from the city core. I disagree, though, because it’s obvious the city is moving west.”

DeVictor says interest in tennis “appears to be picking up” after a decade or so in the doldrums.

“About 10 years ago, interest in tennis had dropped off,” he said. “We held some community meetings, and tennis was not very high on the priority list.”

Using those meetings as a barometer, the city converted tennis courts at Deerfield and Centennial parks into roller hockey and skateboard rinks.

Still, even if tennis is undergoing a renaissance in Lawrence, it’s difficult to justify building another eight-court tennis facility at Free State High when it’s apparent the Lawrence Tennis Center needs an overhaul.

“We’d like to replace the storage building and the rest rooms there, too,” DeVictor said. “But it would take $250,000 to redo it, which we don’t have.”

Drainage repair

Seven or eight years ago, the city and the school district spent approximately $200,000 to improve the drainage system at LTC, but as Eubanks noted, “That was kind of a stop-gap measure.”

Meanwhile, LTC’s surface is looking more and more like a minefield.

“Things are getting worse,” Eubanks said. “A lot of us are leaving the city and buying memberships in tennis clubs.”

Lawrence has no tennis clubs – not since the Alvamar Racquet Club gave up the ghost three years ago and sold its indoor facility at 4120 Clinton Parkway to Seabury Academy, which converted the building into a school.

Alvamar officials reportedly were losing an average of $100,000 a year, yet Mike Elwell, a long-time Lawrence tennis enthusiast, is in the preliminary stages of starting another indoor racquet club from scratch.

One thing is certain: The city won’t be building an indoor tennis facility.

“We don’t have anything on our books to even consider that,” DeVictor said.

Many would say Lawrence has adequate tennis facilities. Several city parks have courts. In fact, the ones at Holcom and Perry parks were resurfaced this year.

Deaf ears?

But with the city’s main facility clearly decaying and with no place to play indoors, Lawrence residents who love to play tennis have reason to feel they’re being ignored.

Renberger doesn’t fit that category. He lives in the Kansas City area and commutes to Lawrence to coach the Firebirds. Nevertheless, he has witnessed the decline.

“When I went to KU,” he said, “I thought the tennis facilities in Lawrence were above average. Now I see them as below average.”