A company can repair Winthrop’s tennis courts for less than $600K. Does that matter?
A sports resurfacing company has said it would renovate the Winthrop University Memorial Tennis Courts for less than $600,000, documentation shows. That challenges one reason given by Winthrop University for why it cut its tennis programs last month.
Carolina Courtworks, a sports surface construction, resurfacing and repair company, confirmed with The Herald Wednesday that the cost to “furnish and install the ProBounce court surface on 12 tennis courts” at Winthrop’s varsity tennis complex would cost $597,550.
Last month, Winthrop interim president Dr. George Hynd told The Herald that repairing the courts to usable condition would cost “$750,000 to $1 million or more.”
The Save Winthrop Tennis Task Force, made up of Winthrop tennis alumni and headed by Winthrop tennis Hall of Famer Clayton Almeida, consulted with Carolina Courtworks and other companies about the cost of the tennis courts as part of its attempt to get the tennis programs reinstated.
“The first time I heard about the program being cut and all that, the coaches from both teams told me that Winthrop had told them that the project to renovate all the courts would cost anywhere from $1 million to $1.5 million,” Almeida said on Wednesday. “We found that a little high.”
The Winthrop Memorial Tennis Courts being in “dire need” of substantial repairs was mentioned in the official announcement of Winthrop’s decision to cut tennis. The elimination of the tennis programs is one of many reductions the Rock Hill, S.C., university is making to reach a 10% reduction in total expenditures ahead of the 2021 fiscal year, The Herald previously reported.
“We thought, if we can address the problem with the court renovation, then that’s part of the solution,” Almeida said.
Would new courts save programs?
Winthrop deputy athletic director Hank Harrawood said Hynd’s estimate of how much it would cost to renovate the tennis courts — “$750,000 to $1 million or more” — is based on a quote the university received in 2018. And while Harrawood acknowledged that the structural issues with the tennis courts are part of the university’s decision to cut the tennis programs, he also made it clear that the decision was influenced more by other factors.
Repairing the tennis courts would not absolve the university of its task to cut $600,000 from its athletic budget’s total operating expenses, Harrawood said.
“The continued savings that we need to realize come from the year-to-year operational expense,” Harrawood said. “Saying, ‘At least we have a definitive place for them to play on campus going forward,’ yes, that’s something. And it’s not insignificant. But it doesn’t realistically get us any closer to a long-term solution.”
The Save Winthrop Tennis Task Force, Almeida said, knows that funding the renovation of the tennis courts is one step in the larger process of reinstating the tennis programs. The task force is fundraising and codifying a fiscal plan to effectively make the programs “break even” through three years.
As of Wednesday afternoon, a task force spokesperson claims that 12 donors have collectively pledged $555,000 to its campaign to reinstate the program — on the condition that the tennis programs are reinstated. Additionally, the GoFundMe campaign started by the same group has raised over $13,600.
“The way we’re looking at it is: Winthrop came with the official statement that they were going to honor all of the scholarships for the players to graduation, so based on that, we see it that they’re assuming that cost,” Almeida said. “So we’re taking (the scholarships) out of the equation, since Winthrop is assuming that cost, and we’re working to fund everything else.”
In 2019, about $151,000 of the men’s tennis team’s $294,196 in total operating expenses came in scholarships, per an NCAA financial summary report obtained by The Herald via a Freedom of Information Act request.
Approximately $378,000 of the women’s tennis team’s $518,944 total operating costs came in scholarships.
In the end, Almeida said the task force’s plan will: (1) articulate how the task force could fund the team’s travel expenses, entrance fees in tournaments, equipment needs and other expenses; (2) convey how having a men’s tennis team actually brings the university revenue because most of the athletes on the tennis team aren’t on full scholarships and thus pay Winthrop tuition; and (3) explore ways in which, with the fully renovated courts, the programs can bring in revenue by partnering with the city of Rock Hill.
“Our goal is to show to Winthrop that for the next three years, they’re only paying for the scholarships they already promised,” Almeida said.
“At the worst case scenario that we’re looking at, it would be a break-even scenario at the end of three years.”
Resurfacing the tennis courts
In an interview last month, longtime Winthrop tennis coach Cid Carvalho told The Herald that the problem with Winthrop’s campus courts has to do with “the subsoil.”
“It’s mainly a landfill place, so with time, the land adjusts, and we had problems with the cracks and then with water surfacing underneath the cracks ...” Carvalho said. “As long as they were just cracks, no big deal. We could play there. But the problem was the water would start seeping through, like oil coming out of the ground, and would make puddles.”
Less than five years ago, both teams stopped playing matches at the Winthrop Memorial Tennis Courts and instead started playing at the Rock Hill Tennis Center.
Winthrop did not pay money to rent the city-owned tennis center.
So training and competing at the Rock Hill Tennis Center did not add to the men’s and women’s tennis programs’ expenses — which, in 2019, was over $813,000, financial records show.
ProBounce is a synthetic overlay that is “more advanced than standard hard court acrylics,” per NGISports.com. When installing the ProBounce surface, according to the quote obtained by The Herald, Carolina Courtworks would:
Clean the existing courts of all debris.
Patch cracks and dips (“bird baths”) in the court with concrete and court patch binder.
Install a synthetic fiber carpet with a sand in-fill over the original hard court.
Finish the court with (1) a Polyseal resin binder over all sand filled carpet; (2) several layers of flexible texter and filler coatings; and (3) paint.
Net posts will then be sanded, primed and painted, and all debris will be removed from the site so the courts will be left ready for play.
The ProBounce system carries a 20-year warranty, the quote states.
This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 3:50 PM.
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