LJWorld.com

Before Saturday night, Mike Bottary never had attempted a slice serve in tennis.

It only took a one-minute lesson from former Lawrence High tennis coach Dick Wedel until Bottary smacked the serve over the net on his first try.

"It's a decent serve and should work," Bottary said. "You just have to take a few thousand reps of doing it."

Bottary and Lawrence resident Jarvis Stirn took part in a wheelchair tennis clinic Saturday at First Serve Tennis, 5200 Clinton Parkway.

Pat Lomshek, First Serve coordinator and instructor, hopes a league of players in wheelchairs will develop in Lawrence. She already received a grant to start the league. It's the first wheelchair tennis program in the Heart of America District.

Connie Robertson, tennis service rep for the United States Tennis Association, helped Lomshek and Wedel lead Saturday's clinic.

"Hopefully, the league will bring more awareness to the sport and to people with disabilities that they can get out there," Bottary said. "There's so many people who just sit there all day and watch TV, doing nothing, because they don't know what's available."

Lomshek said she would try to keep cost at a minimum - $10 for each clinic.

It's evident Bottary, 36, immediately benefited from Wedel's brief slice-serve lesson. After Bottary successfully smashed another serve down the line, Wedel couldn't help but be impressed.

"It allows you to hit the ball hard, and the spin brings the ball down into the court," Wedel said. "From a wheelchair, you're serving lower, so you need to hit the ball up, and you want to hit it hard. It bounces sideways when it hits, so it's a difficult serve to return."

Bottary hadn't played tennis since 2001. He plays a lot of basketball, but wanted to stay active in tennis as well.

Stirn, 32, has been playing tennis for a year. He's a member of Kansas Accessible Sports, which currently sponsors basketball events. Stirn said the organization would like to sponsor tennis eventually.

"I know a lot of individuals out there who are in wheelchairs that don't know there are sports available in the Lawrence-Topeka-Kansas City area," Stirn said. "There's no good place to go to find out where you can play wheelchair sports. A good start would be to get a tennis league going."

The instructors ended the clinic with a short doubles match - Bottary and Wedel against Stirn and Lomshek. They didn't keep score, but Stirn said he made a lot of progress from the clinic.

"The biggest thing to learn is moving the chair while you have the racquet in your hand," Stirn said. "My strength is that I've played wheelchair basketball for 10 years now, and I know how to move my chair. With the racquet in my hands, it's a little bit different, but I know how to move and get there quickly. Now I just need to perfect what I need to do to compete against some of those high-level players."