Schools

Group Will Ask Berkeley School Board to Build New School Tennis Courts

A Berkeley High alum and former star BHS tennis player is leading a move to replace the school's tennis courts, which were converted to a staff parking lot 10 years ago.

By Bay City News Service

Berkeley High School tennis players and a group of prominent local tennis advocates will go to the Berkeley school board meeting tonight, Wednesday, to ask that tennis courts be built again at the school, which converted six former courts into a parking area in 2001.

Jeff Jue, who was number one on the school's men's team for three years before he graduated in 1972, said it's high time that it had tennis courts again because the closure was only supposed to be temporary and the school is one of only two in its conference that doesn't have tennis courts on its campus.

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Berkeley High's girls' team, which plays in the fall, and its boys' team, which plays in the spring, have to walk or get a ride to get to practices and home matches at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School at 1781 Rose St., which is about two miles away from the high school's campus at 1980 Allston Way in downtown Berkeley, Jue said.

Jue, a courtroom clerk for an Alameda County Superior Court judge in Hayward, said Berkeley High had tennis courts for more than 50 years, from 1950 to 2001, but the high school then used the courts for parking for teachers and other staff members when other parking spots were lost when the school district got a bond measure approved and started constructing new buildings in the area.

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The closure of the tennis courts was only supposed to be temporary but it's become permanent, he said.

Noting that the school district has spent millions of dollars to build new facilities for other school sports such as football, baseball and softball, Jue said he thinks it's "an injustice" that the school district hasn't built new tennis courts for the high school's tennis teams.

Jue has been conducting fundraisers for more than 10 years to get money to help pay for new courts and has gained the support of several prominent people in the local tennis community, including Peter Wright, a Berkeley High graduate who coaches the Cal men's team and Steve Cornell, a retired local businessman who played tennis for UCLA with tennis legend Jimmy Connors and was inducted into the Northern California Tennis Hall of Fame last year.

Jue said his group of tennis court supporters has met with Berkeley High and school board officials sporadically in recent years but are new stepping up their campaign by speaking out at the board meeting tonight and meeting in the near future with Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates and the head of the Northern California Tennis Association.

Berkeley Unified School District spokesman Mark Coplan said Jue and the other tennis court supporters "have the best of desires" but also dismissed them as "a small group" of "outsiders" who aren't supported by the Berkeley High School community.

"There's not a Berkeley High population coming forward" to ask that tennis courts be built, Coplan said.

He said, "Parking is a huge need" for the high school's staff and the problem is that there's only limited parking at and near the school because Bates and other city officials are trying to discourage people from parking downtown.

Coplan asked, "Would we give up more than 200 parking spaces for one sport? I don't see it happening."

Jue said he's undeterred by Coplan's comments, saying he believes the tennis courts are strongly supported by a group of current tennis team members and alumni who plan to come to the meeting tonight.

Jue said, "I'm not trying to embarrass anyone but I want to put pressure on them."

He added, "The school board needs to get on board" in finding a way to build new tennis courts for the high school.

Saying that new tennis courts could be used as a community tennis center when the high school teams aren't using them, Jue said the courts could be "a win-win situation for the school, the youths of Berkeley and the community."

The group of tennis court supporters will gather in front of the school board's meeting site at Old City Hall at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way at 6:45 p.m. and then speak during the public comment portion of the meeting, which starts at 7:30 p.m.

Copyright © 2013 by Bay City News, Inc. -- Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.


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