Almost Thirty Years

In April of 1988 I bought a tennis club on top of a water reservoir in North Park a couple of miles from downtown San Diego. I paid $300,000 for it. Originally it had 11 tennis courts. I took four courts out to build an indoor (outside) soccer field. In time I took out more courts to build a second field. As a tennis facility the place did about $40,000 a year. I ran the place several times between managers and I probably spent more time at this facility than any other one. Linda ran the tennis club during the day and did the books plus all the kids worked there when they were still very young. The hours were brutally long and it was a tough neighborhood. I made peace with the local gangs and let them each put an Under 19 team in of which I coached to not get graffiti. Breakends were frequent and I slept there many a time having physical contact several times with burglars. The hookers and homeless people were the biggest problem with the hookers doing business in the bushes around the one square block facility and the homeless sleeping across the street in the park trying to sneak in and take showers. For many years it was a battle.

Almost thirty years ago I coached my daughter Heather at this facility in the Girls Under 10 league. Today I visited the facility to watch my daughter Heather, her daughter Tatiana, play in the Under 6 league.

The neighborhood is mostly cleaned up now and being revitalized. Over all it looks pretty nice. The facility has four fields now and a futsal practice area. Tatiana's team is one of 500 plus teams that play here.