A Tale of Two City Courts

[XLFD]

Growing up in Scottville in the 1970s was quite a bit different than it would be today.  At that particular time, the city was self-sufficient with a supermarket in the downtown area and a new one opening up just north of town, multiple hardware stores, sports stores, apparel, and drug stores.  A brand-new middle school coming in and no hint of the US 31 bypass that would come in at the beginning of the 1990s.  No Walmart's, Meijers, not even any K-marts in the area just yet, just a Grant's that was confined to a corridor that did not really extend beyond the Pere Marquette Highway just yet.

Baseball and softball in the county's centralized city were in its golden age and McPhail's Field would often find itself deluged with players and fans throughout the summer months, and while this reporter would sometimes find himself in one of those roles, more often than not he would be playing tennis on one of the two newly minted tennis courts adjacent to two that were in very bad shape.  Eventually, those poor courts would be removed and replaced with playground equipment and a green space to separate it from the remaining courts.  

While sporting a temperament a lot more like John McEnroe rather than Bjorn Borg, I would often hold my own against my older brother and his friends, my friends, and others who became friends after coming to the courts to watch or play.  Especially when both courts were being used, we quite often played doubles, and we'd play games of what we called "killer tennis" where the players would not only try to win the game but hit as many moving targets at the net as we could.  Memorable to everyone who was there was the time I slammed a ball at the net into the court in front of a friend who was near the net on the other side, and the 100-mph projectile came up and hit him in his undercarriage.  He was down for the count for minutes after this shot heard across the tennis courts happened.  

These were good times, and throughout the eighties and even into the early nineties, when schedules would allow it, this place would be revisited, but all too often, the City of Scottville (who maintains McPhail's Field) would be neglectful in getting their nets up-- or taking them down too early in the season.  Over more years, the court's cracks widened and became flowerpots for dandelions and other weeds, court boundary lines faded, and the venue itself ultimately became unusable for what it was made for, much like the courts that were once aside them and repurposed. 

During this time of degradation, I would rarely play on these courts even when I was living in Scottville, due to the much better upkeep that Ludington's courts offered.  More than thirty years of neglect later, it looks mostly the same, maybe with a little more grass and wider cracks on the court and bent poles that once held nets.

McPhail's Field is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year but that longevity is tarnished by the fact that they have let their tennis courts deteriorate for half of that time and be effectively unusable for a quarter of that time.  One could say that it mimics what has happened to Scottville over its last 50 years, but at least city leaders do not totally overlook the city's welfare as it has their tennis court's decay.  

City leaders have recently dismantled their police force, nixed having a building official, rolled back city attorney expenses, in order to save about $300,000 per year in expenses.  While this was done to remediate an emergent deficit created by a former administration with loose spending that accomplished nothing with those expenditures, one hopes that budget surpluses in the future can look into making what Chuck Marohn of Strongtowns calls going after small, little bets rather than swinging for the fences, which prompts low-risk, high-returning investments that not only build community wealth and capacity, but also improve people’s lives in the process.  It has four steps, simply put:

• Step 1: Humbly observe where people in the community struggle to use the city as it has been built.

• Step 2: Ask the question: What is the next smallest thing we can do right now to address that struggle?

• Step 3: Do that thing. Do it right now.

• Step 4: Repeat.

Think about what could be gained by resurfacing this area and making them into two tennis courts again, or alternatively, four pickleball courts in a city which has neither public facility.  The cost would likely fall under $30,000, as we deduce from Ludington school district's own efforts in October 2024 to resurface eight of their courts.  

If it takes $84K to resurface eight, one may think it would cost $21K to do two, but it would likely cost more due to certain fixed costs that would apply to any sized resurfacing project and additional preparations that may be needed due to the five decades of neglect and the extra cracks that need to have additional care.  

Today is the first day of the resurfacing project at the Schoenherr Tennis Courts just north of Ludington's middle/high school complex.  The following four photos were taken of the eight courts to be resurfaced yesterday.  Try to make out what they have in common as we cover the history of this facility.

The Schoenherr family contributed over a quarter of a million dollars to create this facility back in 2008.  The facility itself would be finished and used in 2009.  

The nine-court facility is open to the public, except when the school's teams use them for practice, competitions or when it's needed for summer tournaments or camps.  It would first be resurfaced sometime around 2017, showing the peach and green colors it currently sports.

That coloration will change with 2025's resurfacing.  The court themselves will be dark gray, and the out-court areas will be orange, better mirroring the school colors.  The centre court, which was resurfaced over a year ago, will not be touched during this iteration.  Cracks which had developed in that court necessitated early treatment as it generally hosts the most important matches.  

If you remember the question that was posed earlier: what do these courts have in common?  The answer is that other than the expansion crack you see directly under the net and between courts, there are no cracks on the playing surface and the paint is holding out, with no peeling to be seen.

We must then ask why these courts are being resurfaced before they really need to be while the City of Scottville's two courts at McPhail's Field have been neglected for the last five decades.