Please accept the following as our final report on the two grants totaling $900.00 that the Committee awarded to the City of Baraboo and the Baraboo Hills CTA. We had another very successful summer of tennis programming! Over the past two years we have increased participation by a total of 42% over the average of the previous five years. This is due, to a large extent, to the alternative funding we have received to hire additional tennis instructors and to increase the number of USA Team Tennis-Youth sessions we can offer to the community. The Baraboo Hills CTA also had another solid summer of tennis as we completed our third year of USA Team Tennis-Adults. We have averaged nearly 50 players per year in each of those three years.
The City of Baraboo Parks and Recreation Department was also awarded a $1,000 USA Team Tennis-Youth Enhancement Grant from USTA/Midwest. We used this money to purchase a Prince Ball Machine and four Ball Baskets. The kids (and the staff/parents) loved it. This was truly a "luxury item" for us and we could not have purchased one without the grant.
As you know we were also awarded a total of $5,000 in facility improvement grants through the Adopt-A-Court program. With the initial construction in 1994 and including recent upgrades/grants, the City of Baraboo has invested over $103,000 in making Campbell Park the best community tennis facility in the area. We have received several national grants over the past two years totaling nearing $15,500 in alternative facility/payroll revenue. This alternative revenue is a key factor in keeping program fees low, keeping kids playing tennis, and keeping taxpayers happy!
I am especially proud to note that we are one of only seven agencies out of 133 agencies that were awarded a "Tennis in the Parks" grant in 2003 and 2004 to win the award in each of the first two years that it has been available. In those same two years 672 agencies have applied for the grant. Our community tennis programs were also featured in an article about USA Team Tennis-Youth in the July issue of the National Recreation and Park Association-P&R magazine. We are also a "Tennis Welcome Center".
The latest development is that the Baraboo Hills Community Tennis Association has been accepted as a part of the USTA.com network and in the next few weeks we will have our own website! The USTA has trained us and we will be "on the web" in a couple of weeks.
The main thing I wanted to stress to everyone who may read this email is that a huge part of the success of our community tennis programs and facilities started with a WTA-RC grant for tennis programming and a CTA seed grant. My thanks to everyone who has contributed to our success, but a special thanks must go to you Lloyd and Steve Wise who met with us in Baraboo a few years ago and got our CTA off the ground. I can't wait for the summer 2005 to arrive!