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Nick Bollettieri

New complex offers much more than tennis

July 7, 2020 By Kevin Weiss

Dozens and dozens of mask-wearing visitors took a celebratory tour for a preview of the Sarah Vande Berg Tennis & Wellness Center, now under development in Zephyrhills.

The center, at 6585 Simons Road, is expected to open in mid to late August.

Todd Vande Berg, third from left, is surrounded by family. From left: Mariah Wagner, of Seffner; Charla Vande Berg and Todd, of Zephyrhills; Tim Ngo, of Seffner; Abigail Ngo, of Seffner; and, Emily Vande Berg, of Zephyrhills. (Fred Bellet)

Numerous cosmetic touches remain on the $4.9 million state-of-the-art facility that’s expected to alter the landscape of The City of Pure Water.

At first glance, the complex’s main attraction, of course, is tennis. It will offer opportunities for beginners to competitive recreational players — and possibly even some elite-level college and professional players.

The complex features 11 regulation outdoor tennis courts — including eight clay surface courts, two hard surface, and a clay surface exhibition court.

It is expected to play host to significant tournaments that come through.

The exhibition court, centrally located among all courts, will offer stadium-tiered seating accommodating up to 1,300 people, and up to 4,000 people if additional bleachers are contracted in for an event.

In addition to tennis, there will be eight pickleball courts and four padel courts — deemed as two of the world’s faster-growing sports.

The padel courts will be the first such courts in Central Florida, said Marcos Del Pilar, a former professional padel player in Spain. He’s heading up padel-related programming at the complex.

With unfinished courts in the background, Andy Sorrentino fields questions from a group who took the preview tour of The Sarah Vande Berg Tennis & Wellness Center.

Played in doubles, padel combines elements of tennis, squash, racquetball and platform tennis into a fast-moving game played within a glass-enclosed court, one-third the size of a tennis court.

Compared to tennis, Del Pilar explained the game of padel is easier to pick up because of smaller, more compact racquets that are perforated and without strings.

“This is something that everyone can get, in 5 minutes,” said Del Pilar, proudly noting his 70-year-old mother plays five days a week.

Del Pilar added the sport lends to being “very social” and “engaging,” because matches are played in such tight quarters with four people at once.

“You are playing and also spending time with your friends because you’re playing very close. That’s a reason it’s so much fun,” he said.

Beyond offering racquet sports, officials believe the tennis complex’s nearly 8,000-square-foot indoor facility takes the project to the next level. They specifically cite the center’s cutting-edge health and wellness amenities that promote training and recovery.

Marcos del Pilar, left, promotions and sales manager of All Racquet Sports USA, and Andy Sorrentino, a major partner and chief operating officer, ham it up during the tour of the Sarah Vande Berg Tennis & Wellness Center.

There are rooms dedicated for cryotherapy, salt therapy, bio/neuro feedback therapy, massage and yoga. There’s also a 1,300-square-foot fitness center featuring workout equipment, including recumbent bikes, rowers and ellipticals.

The salt therapy room figures to be one of the more popular usable spaces. The room will be walled with Himalayan sea salt and floored with granulated salt, so much so that it will resemble walking on sand. Visitors will enter and settle in zero gravity lounge chairs, all while iodized salt-infused air is streamed into the room.

This is being promoted as an area that benefits breathing, provides stress-relief and improves skin.

The center also will have a full restaurant and bar, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner on weekdays, and brunch and dinner on weekends. The restaurant, operated by Land O’ Lakes-based caterer Mark Vesh, will be able to seat about 60 patrons inside and at least another 100 outside.

Andy Sorrentino, the facility’s managing partner, characterized the center as being unique.

“There’s a lot of wellness clubs, there’s a lot of tennis clubs, but there are not very many, if any, tennis and wellness clubs,” said Sorrentino, who spent 26 years in sports management at Aronimink Golf Club, a private country club outside Philadelphia. “The ability to train here, eat here, play here, get your wellness here, is, very unique.”

The Sarah Vande Berg Tennis & Wellness Center has been in the works for more than three years.

The Sarah Vande Berg Tennis & Wellness Center, at 6585 Simons Road, is still awaiting its signage and round, logo tennis ball, windows. A tour was held at the center, though, to provide a look at the project’s progress.

It’s a public-private partnership between the City of Zephyrhills and Pascal Collard, a longtime tennis pro and instructor serving as the facility’s CEO.

The complex will be membership-based, but also open to walk-ins for a nominal fee.

Collard coins the facility as “a little bit of a country club,” yet “accessible to everybody.”

Meanwhile, the facility is already attracting some movers and shakers in the tennis sphere.

Collard revealed that Nick Bollettieri, an International Tennis Hall of Famer who’s coached 10 world No. 1 ranked players, will be offering group lessons about once a month, for ladies, juniors and aspiring coaches.

“The guy basically invented tennis,” Collard said. “You can’t go higher than that in the world, and it’s happening in Zephyrhills.”

Patriotically protected, Chad Melms, of Lakeland, was among those touring the Sarah Vande Berg Tennis & Wellness Center. He and his son, Braeden Melms, were speaking with Mika Todo, an SVB pro tennis coach.

Additionally, Collard shared the facility’s tennis director will be Rene Moller, who coaches John Isner, America’s top-ranked men’s tennis player.

The complex is named in honor of Sarah Vande Berg, a former Zephyrhills High School district champion and three-time state qualifier who tragically died in an automobile accident in South Carolina at the age of 21, in October 2015.

Her father, Todd Vande Berg, is the longtime planning director for Zephyrhills.

Participating in the tour, the planning director felt “the whole gamut of emotions” walking throughout the soon-to-open facility named in memory of his daughter.

“It’s surreal. It’s a little bit hard to believe, just how beautiful it has come out,” he said.

The planning director is confident the tennis center will “raise the bar for Zephyrhills and the whole region.”

“It’s just going to be an amazing facility that we think’s going to bring a lot of people here, maybe some tournaments, it’s going to be exciting,” he said. “This area is ripe for a facility like this; we’re so fortunate to have this here.”

Published July 08, 2020

Filed Under: Local Sports, Zephyrhills and East Pasco Sports Tagged With: Andy Sorrentino, Aronimink Golf Club, City of Pure Water, City of Zephyrhills, John Isner, Marcos Del Pilar, Mark Vesh, Nick Bollettieri, Pascal Collard, Rene Moller, Sarah Vande Berg Tennis & Wellness Center, Simons Road, Zephyrhills, Zephyrhills High School

Foundation offers tennis lessons to Pasco youths

October 24, 2018 By Kevin Weiss

Construction has yet to begin on the Sarah Vande Berg Memorial Tennis Center in Zephyrhills — but that hasn’t stopped the community from working to serve up more tennis opportunities to its underserved population.

Well before the new $3.5 million, 11-court facility opens off of Simons Road, dozens of underprivileged youth in east Pasco will get opportunities to learn the game through a new nonprofit —  the Sarah Vande Berg Tennis Foundation.

Pascal Collard, center left, and Nick Bollettieri, right, stand at the net with some of the Nick Bollettieri and Sarah Vande Berg Tennis Clinic’s participants. (Fred Bellet)

The foundation is headed up by professional tennis instructor Pascal Collard, who will also manage the daily operations of the new tennis center bearing the same name.

Its overall purpose is to instill character, leadership and academics to children, through the game of tennis.

The foundation’s first major fundraiser was on Oct 5, at Arbor Green in New Tampa.

About 60 participants and another 40 volunteers turned out for a tennis clinic and gala headlined by International Tennis Hall of Fame coach Nick Bollettieri.

Bollettieri, 87, is renowned for grooming 10 world No. 1 players, including Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, Maria Sharapova and Dade City’s Jim Courier, among many others.

The legendary coach also is known for founding the IMG Academy in Bradenton — formerly the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy — which opened in 1978 as the world’s first full-time tennis boarding school.

The gala helped raise more than $10,000, which will be used to purchase tennis rackets and subsidize tennis camps for youth, who will begin learning the sport on the courts at Zephyr Park and will transition to the city’s new state-of-the-art facility expected to open in late 2019.

“This is going to help a lot of kids — kids that have probably never seen a tennis ball,” said Collard, a former tennis director at Saddlebrook Tennis Academy in Wesley Chapel from 2003 to 2006.

His training includes working with several widely known tennis pros, including Younes El Aynaoui and Martin Verkerk, both of whom coincidentally ranked as high as No. 14 in the ATP Tour rankings back in 2003.

It’s not Collard’s first outreach program.

While he was tennis director at The Merion Cricket Club — a private club in Haverford, Pennsylvania — Collard created a similar foundation called Down the Line and Beyond.

The Philadelphia-based nonprofit, which has grown to serve more than 1,600 underprivileged youths from 7 through 17, facilitates positive character and education development through tennis lessons.

Some of those youths have earned collegiate tennis scholarships.

“None of them would’ve played tennis — none— without the foundation. We are going to do the same thing over here (in Zephyrhills),” Collard said.

The Sarah Vande Berg Tennis Foundation will begin its program with 25 kids to 50 kids, and hopes to grow it from there, Collard said. “We have to touch one life at a time.”

In preparation for the start of the tennis clinic, instructor Vincent Suillerot, 24, of Paris, France makes sure a sufficient number of tennis balls were on hand for each of the courts.

The foundation — and tennis center— is named after the former Zephyrhills High School district champion who became a scholarship player on the University of South Carolina Upstate women’s tennis team. Vande Berg, the daughter of the Zephyrhills planning director Todd Vande Berg, died in an automobile accident at the age of 21 in October 2015.

And, it’s all drawn the support of Bollettieri, a longtime friend of Collard’s.

Bollettieri, who lives in Sarasota, plans to visit Zephyrhills every six weeks to eight weeks to pitch in with foundation clinics and other events.

Instead of his well-documented coaching achievements, Bollettieri said he wants to be remembered for helping children, particularly those from inner cities and of lower socio-economic status.

He, along with fellow tennis Hall of Famer Arthur Ashe, started the Ashe-Bollettieri Cities Tennis program in the late 1980s, which introduced thousands of youth to the sport and helped hundreds achieve athletic or academic scholarships.

Of the Sarah Vande Berg Tennis Foundation, Bollettieri said: “First of all, when you do things for charity, there’s no greater reward than helping out for a great cause. Pascal’s going to give an opportunity for a lot of boys and girls to make it in life.”

Tennis center to be draw for Zephyrhills
The tennis legend, too, is impressed with the design plans of the forthcoming Sarah Vande Berg Memorial Tennis Center.

“I think a lot of thought has gone into it,” Bollettieri said. “The big thing is, someday, if they could get a few indoor courts, whether it’s open on the sides or, if they can have at least a covered area, that would help tremendously.”

Renderings of the facility show 11 full-sized outdoor courts — a mix of clay and hard surfaces — built to U.S Tennis Association (USTA) professional standards.

Additionally, an 8,000-square-foot tennis center is expected to include a fitness/wellness center and cryotherapy room, a pro shop, a restaurant, conference and multipurpose rooms, a kid’s club and playground, a common area, office spaces and other features.

At some point, there’s also a possibility of phasing in a covered/indoor tennis court building that would have four full-size courts.

Though its architectural design plans are not yet final, the tennis center is expected to be complete “in about a year,” Steve Spina, who is city manager for Zephyrhills, said during the foundation fundraiser.

Preparing to check-in at the registration table, Lisa Strickland of New Tampa was among the 60 or so who participated in the Nick Bollettieri and Sarah Vande Berg Tennis Clinic at the Arbor Greene Community Center. Vande Berg was a former Zephyrhills High School district champion who became a scholarship player on the University of South Carolina Upstate women’s tennis team. Vande Berg, the daughter of the Zephyrhills planning director Todd Vande Berg, died in an automobile accident at the age of 21 in October 2015.

Along with city dollars, funding assistance for the project is coming from the state, recreation impact fees, USTA grants and Penny for Pasco, among other sources.

Besides its public recreational use, the facility will also be used to draw an assortment of regional and national tournaments to East Pasco.

“I think it brings us to a whole new level,” Spina said. “It’s just a facility like we’ve never seen, to really make us a player, nationally.

“I think it’s huge for the community,” added Collard. “It’s going to be a great impact in terms of visibility and awareness of Zephyrhills, and put them on the map.”

Vande Berg remembered on, off the court
Meantime, Todd Vande Berg is appreciative of having his late daughter’s name memorialized through the tennis foundation and the facility.

“If I lived in Tampa, I’m not sure this happens,” he said, “but to have a small, interlocked community like we have, that know the people and care for the people and support each other,  it’s pretty unique and special.”

Aside from her achievements on the court, Sarah Vande Berg was known for her friendliness and outgoing personality, her father said.

“She was super competitive on the court,” Todd Vande Berg said, “but the complete opposite off the court. Sarah loved people. She was super social. She befriended all the athletes, and not just the tennis athletes.”

Sarah, too, was known for her work with children with special needs.

“Sarah had a special place in her heart towards special needs kids,” her father said. “They just seemed to gravitate to her.”

Published October 24, 2018

Filed Under: Local Sports, Zephyrhills and East Pasco Sports Tagged With: Andre Agassi, Arbor Green, Arthur Ashe, Ashe-Bollettieri Cities Tennis, Down the Line and Beyond, ick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, IMG Academy, International Tennis Hall of Fame, Jim Courier, Maria Sharapova, Martin Verkerk, Monica Seles, Nick Bollettieri, Pascal Collard, Penny for Pasco, Saddlebrook Tennis Academy, Sarah Vande Berg Memorial Tennis Center, Sarah Vande Berg Tennis Foundation, Simons Road, Steve Spina, The Merion Cricket Club, Todd Vande Berg, U.S. Tennis Association, University of South Carolina, Younes El Aynaoui, Zephyr Park, Zephyrhills, Zephyrhills High School

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