For the last three and a half years, the People’s Courts Tennis Club has been Emma Dong’s second home.
Dong, who has dreams of competing at a national level, says she fell in love with tennis “because it’s fun and you have to use your mind and think where you want to put the balls.”
The 10-year-old high-performance player trains four times a week at the Coquitlam facility, which is home to Global Tennis Academy, a school that Tennis Canada has dubbed an official Tennis Development Centre (TDC).
Dong is one of 62 elite juniors at the academy, which produces many of Canada’s top junior players.
“Here, coach Dimitri (Penchev) just loves my daughter. Somehow it costs me $900 a month,” Emma’s father Justin Dong said.
Global Tennis Academy currently leases court space from People’s Courts Tennis Club but the academy will soon need a new home court.
At the end of June, the City of Coquitlam is bringing in a new operator. Larry Jurovich of Surrey Tennis Centre, another Tennis Development Centre, won the open bid process. Jurovich’s company will renovate the existing dome and reopen it as the Coquitlam Tennis Centre this fall.
Dong fears his daughter’s training costs and required hours will triple, forcing her out of her second home.
“It hurts so much,” he said. “I feel like sad and helpless.”
He’s not alone.
“I’m just really sad that the program is disappearing,” Blythe Tait, who has three children currently enrolled in high-performance training with Global Tennis Academy, said. “I don’t know how to tell my children.”
Under the new operator, the City of Coquitlam said the average player will see court fees decrease in price and an increase in public court access at the covered tennis facility. The city also said high performance, competitive and elite tennis are required to be offered as part of the new Coquitlam Tennis Centre.
“There may be slightly different instructors but the quality of the instruction and the level of the instruction and price will be comparable or even less expensive than it is under Global Tennis,” Coquitlam Parks, Recreation & Culture general manager Raul Allueva said.
Some parents aren’t convinced.
“It doesn’t have the capability and capacity for serving high-performance junior players,” Tait said.
Jurovich told Global News via email that he will be bringing in “a coaching team more qualified than the present one … and any suggestion that our program will be more expensive or less in quality is 100 per cent incorrect.”
Tait said he’s frustrated because he feels the city has looked at the current facility, but not the programs that were being run within it.
Meantime Tennis Canada has written to the City of Coquitlam’s mayor and council in support of Global Tennis Academy.
In a letter dated April 12, Tennis Canada Senior Vice President of Tennis Development Hatem McDadi urged “all involved to be proactive to exhaust all options to help find the Global Tennis Academy a new home to operate their high quality programs.”
Parents like Dong and Tait are hoping it will help rally a resolution so their high-performance kids won’t be sidelined in September.
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