Raleigh Parks and Recreation Tennis Director David Bell Discusses Their Green Tennis Machine and the positive impact it has had on their practice balls.
David is the Tennis Director for the city of Raleigh parks and recreation tennis program, overseeing 112 courts at 25 locations. There are 5,000 participants involved with lessons, leagues and other programs offered through the tennis program. Located at the main tennis facility, Millbrook Exchange Tennis Center, David oversees a part time staff of over 20 instructors and office workers where he has been since 2004. In 2004 David received a national award from the USTA for his work with Junior Team Tennis. David is also very active in both the Raleigh Tennis Association, as an Advisory Board Member, and at the North Carolina USTA.
After having their Green Tennis Machine (“GTM”) for only a few months, David took the time to help explain how the GTM has already made a positive impact on their teaching balls without being a time/resource burden.
A transcript of the video is here:
The Green Tennis Machine is a Great system. I think that the short amount to time that you need to spend on it, make sure that you have somebody indentified that will take care of the balls on a regular basis just like anything. It doesn’t take much time to do it, assign somebody to do it. You get a much higher quality ball, and I think any club could use this.
Well we’re here at the Tennis Center in Raleigh where we have 23 courts. We have a system wide, 112 courts, at 25 locations. But this is primarily where all the instruction and league play are held throughout the city. I’m David Bell and I’m the Tennis Director for Raleigh Parks and Recreation and Cultural Resources.
Absolutely, I had to watch the testimonials, and see what people were talking about. I thought maybe it was only for the largest of operations, but found out that you could do is with any size operation. It’s going to help your average ball be a much higher quality bounce, and get a lot less complaints about dead balls in my cart.
Most of our balls are not new ones, so we’ve now been able to raise the standard of our average ball is now a much better pressurized. We don’t get the complaints as much with bad balls. Those are easier to sift out when you only have a few, versus whole carts full of poor balls. Now we have whole carts of really well pressurized balls.
Our practice balls from the ball machine and for teaching and for our junior league play. So what we’ve done is eliminated all the practice balls, because with the pressurized machine we know the ball is going to last longer, felt to be higher quality. So now we buy a premium ball, and don’t buy the practice ball. We can re-pressurize. So now our ball machine, junior leagues, and our teaching carts are all filled with a premium ball that is well pressurized. So it’s a much higher quality bounce. at raleigh parks and recreation
That’s less than 10 minutes. It’s pretty easy with the bags go in and the bags come out. The hose goes on, and you turn on the pressure and get it up to the needle at the right spot and that is the end of it. Had our first pressurized batch came out. We took them out with a group of people and we tried to bounce them around and find out what was different. After 5 or 10 minutes, we forgot about the fact that they were re-pressurized, and just started playing. So that was great.
Raleigh Parks and Recreation is a great community program. Check out Raleigh Parkks and Recreation here