The Cumberland County Board of Education voted Thursday, Oct. 22, to pay for a professional study of where new tennis courts could go at Cumberland County High School in Crossville, with the study capped at $10,000. The study will look at land behind the school’s stadium, the area CCHS athletics staff and board member Kevin Dean said they preferred.
CCHS has no tennis courts on campus. Its teams have traveled to Camp Nakanawa, which Dean described to the board in September as “the 21 mile drive to Camp Nakanawa each way.”
The vote buys a study, not courts
The motion directs Director of Schools Rebecca Farley to contact an architect for a feasibility study and cost estimate. Reading the motion back, Farley described two layouts: courts on the far side of the stadium bleachers, behind the track-and-field area, or moving the soccer field there and building courts where the soccer field now sits.
The study is also to cover soccer needs such as dressing rooms and restrooms, and to leave room for a possible indoor facility later. Dean, who made the motion, said six courts is about the minimum needed to host tournaments. If the $10,000 limit becomes a problem, Farley is to come back to the board.
The motion passed on a roll-call vote, and no member could be heard voting no on the meeting video, posted on the YouTube channel that the district’s board meetings page lists for meeting recordings. As of Thursday morning, Oct. 29, official minutes of the Oct. 22 meeting had not been posted on the board’s BOEconnect site.
Four sites, and price tags from 2023
Dean, the board’s First District representative, laid out four sites in a five-page proposal and four maps. He wrote that the concepts were “intended only as a starting point for discussion.” None of them came with a cost estimate.
| Option | Site and land owner | What the map shows | Drawbacks listed in the proposal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Original court site at CCHS, now a parking lot (school board) | 6 courts with bleachers, about 140 by 300 feet | “Recently paved new parking lot”; no room for an indoor archery or rifle range |
| 2 | Martin Elementary property (school board) | 6 courts with bleachers, a 50-by-40-foot restroom building, space for indoor archery, existing parking | Restrooms must be built; could limit expansion if Martin becomes a middle school; harder for PE classes |
| 3 | Land behind CCHS (school board) | 6 courts with bleachers, about 3.6 acres remaining, a marked area for an indoor archery/rifle range with bathrooms and concessions, and a note that it “would need a parking lot” | Needs restrooms and a new parking lot; unknowns could have more impact on land not previously developed; harder for PE classes |
| 4 | Joint CCHS-Stone Memorial complex at the Cumberland County Community Complex (county) | 12 courts with bleachers beside an existing parking lot | Removes some grass event parking, including space used for the county fair; county’s willingness unknown; harder for PE classes |
The only tennis prices in the packet date from 2023. A March 31, 2023, Upland Design Group budget sheet lists “6 Tennis Courts” at $572,490.53 as Alternate No. 2 in Lee Adcock Construction’s bid for the CCHS auditorium. The same file includes the bid tabulation from the March 15, 2023, bid opening, where the three other bidders priced the tennis-court alternate at $311,000, $444,000 and $598,000. Farley told the board those bids are three years old and that she had not yet gotten a new price.
Why the athletics staff picked the land behind the stadium
Stu Bowen, CCHS’s assistant athletic director, told the board that Option 1 would cost the school about 120 parking spaces it relies on when several events run on the same night. He said the Martin site is prone to flooding, and that an off-campus complex would be hard for students who do not drive.
He called Option 3 the staff’s consensus choice, saying it would not take space from other programs and could add parking. He also suggested a covered multi-use facility, citing quotes of $40,000 to $80,000 to reseal outdoor courts about every five years and an estimate near $800,000 to own six outdoor courts over 25 years.
Dean said he had been torn between Options 1 and 3, but the parking concerns made Option 3 his first choice. He said it could open the way to a master plan with a walking track, cross country and possibly a soccer complex.
The back story: an auditorium and a parking lot
Dean’s proposal says that, to his understanding, tennis courts were “included in the original planning for the CCHS Auditorium project.” At the Sept. 24 meeting, he said six courts would still fit on the old site, “now a paved parking lot,” and that the city “converted all of their tennis courts into pickleball.”
Dean’s proposal ends by calling the lack of courts an issue that, in his opinion, “could have been avoided.” Board chairman Chris King said in September that tennis would go on the next month’s work session agenda. It was listed there and as item 18 on the Oct. 22 meeting agenda.
CCHS athletics director Blake Allen told the board at the Sept. 24 meeting: “We have had kids that do not want to play tennis because of the travel to Camp Nakanawa.”
Top image: Illustrative image: empty high school tennis courts in Reno, Nevada, not Cumberland County. Photo: Rick Obst, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons