VERNON, FLA., — For the first time in program history, the Vernon High School tennis team has courts to call home.
A ribbon cutting on August 15 opened six new hard courts in Vernon, the result of a $600,000 state of Florida capital improvements appropriation, plus an additional $34,000 contributed by the Washington County School District. The project closes a gap that defined the program for a decade, a team that competed for years without a single usable court of its own.
Head coach Laurie Simmons is entering her 11th season leading both the boys’ and girls’ teams. Until now, every practice and every match meant a drive.
“We’ve never had courts. We’ve always had to travel to play. So this is huge,” Simmons said. “To me, it’s really going to help grow the sport within our school system, but it’s also going to help grow the sport in the community.”
Matches were a minimum of 45 minutes away. Practices entailed loading players into cars for a 30-minute trip to Bonifay, to share two courts that weren’t in the best shape. It was hard to practice, especially with ten kids and just two courts. The travel cost the program more than time, it was a financial hit on players and families as well.
“It’s going to open up tennis to a whole different set of people that didn’t have the opportunity to see it,” Simmons said, noting that parents who couldn’t make the drive had never watched their own children compete. “It’s just going to make it where I will be able to have more kids on the team.”
An advocate from two and a half hours away
The push began with a scheduled match. In 2019 Vernon traveled to Maclay School in Tallahassee, where Allen Long serves as head tennis professional at Golden Eagle Country Club and helps coach the high school. Long’s players tried to scout the opponent online and pulled up Mount Vernon, New York, by mistake. What arrived was a team from a Panhandle town of roughly 750 people, still recovering from Hurricane Michael, with barely enough rackets to field a lineup and no team uniforms.
Long went home and told his wife he was going to help. “I’ve always felt like I wanted to serve those that didn’t have the opportunity,” Long said. “My goal has always been to try to get tennis in every little nook and cranny anywhere that I’ve touched.”
He started with team shirts and a case of balls. When he asked Simmons to send videos of her facility, she told him there wasn’t one. Behind the school sat two cracked courts with no nets, painted with 10-, 20-and 30-yard markers because that is where the marching band practiced during football season.
Long called his Babolat representative, to see what he could do for them. Twelve new rackets and twelve full uniform sets followed for the boys, and the same for the girls. Members of Golden Eagle Country Club sent nets and posts and have funded lessons for Vernon players at Panama City Racquet Club ever since.
Courts required something bigger. Long carried a video of the program’s conditions to a gathering where he met a lobbyist and Gov. Ron DeSantis’s chief of staff, and he learned the path: paperwork, qualification, passage through the House and Senate, and the governor’s signature. Sen. Jay Trumbull, whose District 2 includes Washington County, worked the appropriation through. It was signed roughly a year before the courts were completed.
“You have to look outside the box and do more than just be a tennis professional teaching tennis and running programs,” Long said. “I think all of us need to give back more. I’ve been given more than I’ve given back in this awesome sport. We’re not going to grow this sport unless we start getting out there and really pushing the sport.”
Built to be shared
The new courts sit on city-owned land behind the old high school, secured through a 100-year lease from the City of Vernon for one dollar. The school district maintains all six, while the city and district each carry liability insurance. Four courts serve the high school program and two are open to the public at no cost, with a key checked out at Vernon City Hall.
Community programming begins in September, led by Thomas and Laura Dobbins of Panama City Racquet Club, with adult and youth offerings. Sign-up sheets were available at the ribbon cutting.
The effort to build youth programming picked up support at the ribbon cutting, where the Youth Tennis Foundation presented Vernon with a $1,000 check to help grow youth tennis at the new courts. USTA Florida’s George English connected Foundation board member Linda Williams with Simmons to make the gift happen.
USTA Florida supported the effort through its advocacy program, with staff and volunteers. Additional programming is now in development, including a Love to Learn beginner program and summer camps designed to keep all six courts in use year-round.
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