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- Durham’s thriving tennis roots deserve better courts for booming growth.
- Durham tennis: Growth explodes, but courts crumble. Players demand action!
- Deep roots, surging growth: Durham tennis needs courts to match!
- Durham tennis players: Our deep roots deserve courts matching growth!
- Durham’s booming tennis community seeks courts worthy of its legacy.
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On Saturday mornings, dozens of eager tennis players descend on the courts at Elmira Avenue Park in East Durham for intense competition and lighthearted camaraderie, a tradition that dates back decades. Some players, like 86-year-old LaVerne Harper, have played at Elmira since it was built in 1978.
On one such recent day, Bruce Parker, another regular at Elmira, demonstrated Harper’s age and dedication to the game by pitching dirt between his fingers: “You see this stuff right here? He ain’t quite as old as that.”
When players aren’t hitting volleys across the net, they’re sending friendly barbs back and forth at each other about their performance on the courts. For hours, they sit in lawn chairs and gossip with snacks and refreshments in hand as they serve up stories about their lives in Durham.
“Every weekend is an event,” Harper said.
Most of the group is made up of older Black residents who adopted Elmira Avenue Park as their “home court,” after it was opened in the 1970s, when courts where Black players felt welcome were more limited. Nowadays, the eight courts at Elmira are well loved but increasingly difficult to play on, with gaping fissures and warped surfaces from water damage and poor drainage that make it more precarious for Y’all, especially the older players, to navigate. The tennis courts at Elmira aren’t the only ones in need of a facelift, either.
Durham tennis players, spearheaded by the Eno Community Tennis Association (Eno CTA), have been advocating for updates to the city’s tennis courts for years, arguing that upgrades would not only benefit local players but also attract regional and national tournaments that bring in significant tax revenue for the host city.
Based on their advocacy, Durham Parks and Recreation (DPR) is recommending $7 million to address a backlog of tennis court improvements. Local tennis lovers will find out if the projects are getting funded when a draft of the city’s upcoming budget is presented May 18.
“It is just so important to us that we continue to develop the community around [tennis],” said Adrianne Charleston, a regular at the Elmira Park tennis courts who spoke at a March public hearing alongside her 8-year-old son, Lightning.
“Every weekend, me and my mom go to Elmira Park to play tennis and hang out with our friends called the Old Man Crew,” Lightning said at the same hearing. “When we don’t play tennis, we sit under a tree and laugh, crack jokes, and talk each other’s heads off.”
A Growing Sport
Tennis has steadily grown in the Triangle area in recent years, according to the North Carolina chapter of the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA), the nonprofit which oversees the competition circuit throughout the country, culminating in its signature event, the U.S. Open Championship. Matches and tournaments are administered by local USTA…
