Congratulations to executive director Nick Walton and everyone involved with the Sarah Vande Berg (SVB) Tennis Foundation, which hosted its 4th annual “Raise A Racquet” gala at the SVB Tennis Center (located on Simon Rd. in Zephyrhills) on Nov. 9. This year’s gala raised more than $63,000 to support the Foundation’s ongoing efforts to provide tennis racquets, lessons and the opportunity to play the sport at no cost to kids who would not otherwise be able to afford them. Among the 12 school partner programs, impacting more than 350 students, are Watergrass and New River elementary schools.
Foundation exec. dir. Nick Walton (left) with Board chair Mike Avadikian
The Foundation also provides opportunities for high school students to serve as the Foundation’s Ambassadors, where they are taught by adult mentors the proper way to coach younger kids.
“By teaching our Ambassadors how to lead and coach,” Walton said, “we’re not only building skilled athletes but also role models who guide our youngest student-athletes with enthusiasm and heart.”
Walton also noted that, thanks to the fact that the Ambassador program had more applicants than ever this year, the Foundation has added a Junior Ambassador group, “giving future leaders as young as the third grade the chance to shine.”
Among the Foundation’s 14 Ambassadors for 2024-25 are three Wesley Chapel-area high school students — Amya Ramsey, a junior at Wesley Chapel High; Dalton O’Donovan, a freshman at the Kirkland Ranch Academy of Innovation; and Treye Hochstetler, a junior at Kirkland Ranch Academy.
Emily Vande Berg (left) presents the SVB Memorial Character Award to Jenna Goodman.
The winner of this year’s Sarah Vande Berg Memorial Character Award, given each year to one of the Foundation’s Ambassadors, was Zephyrhills High senior Jenna Goodman. Jenna was presented the award by Emily Vande Berg, the sister of Sarah Vande Berg. Sarah and Emily’s father, Todd, also spoke at the event.
Sarah, of course, was the Zephyrhills High tennis star for whom the Tennis & Wellness Center was named. She was continuing her career at the University of South Carolina Upstate when she was tragically killed at age 21 — with three other of the school’s athletes — in a car accident in 2015.
Nearly 200 of the Foundation’s supporters attended this year’s gala, where attendees raised a provided tennis racquet during live auction “bidding” on gifts for the participating students — from $18 for one racquet for one kid up to $5,000 for 30 kids to receive 8 weeks of after-school programming at one of the Foundation’s partner schools.
Now that it’s been open for a while, you’ve hopefully heard of the Sarah Vande Berg (SVB) Tennis & Wellness Center, located on Simons Rd. in Zephyrhills.
In case you haven’t heard of it before, SVB has an amazing array of competition tennis courts, as well as the full-size courts for both pickleball and padel, two of the fastest-growing racquet sports in the world.
But, SVB also is home to an amazing fitness center and also offers licensed massages, cryotherapy, salt therapy, sports counseling, a boutique pro shop and a full-service restaurant with chef-created food by locally renowned Vesh Catering.
But, you might ask, what does all this have to do with you? I’m glad you asked.
One of the things we’ve heard from our readers in New Tampa and Wesley Chapel is that SVB is “too far away” for our readers to join. Wrong! It’s only 15-20 minutes away from most of our Wesley Chapel communities and, with its unique variety of activities, you really should check it out.
Still not convinced? Here’s some incentive: To win an amazing prize package to give SVB a try for FREE, send us an email (to ads@ntneighborhoodnews.com) or message us (at “Neighborhood News” on Facebook) with your name, address, the community you live in, a valid email address and daytime phone number, by Tuesday, June 1, to be entered into a random drawing to win this incredible SVB prize package worth nearly $500:
• One week of Recreational Kids Summer Camp (for ages 4-6) or Boot Camp (for athletes ages 8-14) with former NFL star Mel Williams
• One 25-minute Salt Room session
• Brunch for two at the Vesh Café
• SVB “swag bag,” including an SVB logo mask, Mahala cup, lipstick, sunstick, black cup & borosilicate verre water bottle
Club volleyball has been keeping the January calendar full at the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County.
If tourism is going to bounce back from the Covid-19-ravaged 2020, a series of spikes, dunks, cheers and racquet sports will have a lot to do with it.
At least that’s how it looks to Pasco County tourism director Adam Thomas, who says that after a tough year for tourism around the world, events are returning to Pasco’s “sports tourism” sites, including the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus, Advent Health Center Ice and the Sarah Vande Berg (SVB) Tennis Center — all part of the county’s “Florida’s Sports Coast” branding.
Thomas says the three facilities have 14 events scheduled for the first two months of the year, with many more to come, as national governing bodies like USA Volleyball, USA Wrestling, USA Powerlifting and others look to take advantage of Florida’s open-for-business status and have eyed the Wesley Chapel-area to hold events.
“We are just now getting back to normalcy,” Thomas says, despite rising Covid numbers in Pasco, in Florida and around the nation. “We are looking at sports tourism in 2021 to really get us back to where we need to be.”
One event that won’t provide as much help as originally expected is Super Bowl LV, which is being played at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa on February 7. Generally, a huge event like the Super Bowl would have a major economic impact on nearby Wesley Chapel, with visitors staying in local hotels and eating and shopping at local restaurants and stores.
But, Covid-19 protocols will limit the crowd at Raymond James Stadium, which can hold 65,890 fans, to roughly 20,000 for the Big Game.
Thomas thinks Wesley Chapel will still enjoy some benefit from the Super Bowl, but in October, Pasco backed out of plans to spend $250,000 on a Super Bowl sponsorship and instead use that money for something more likely to bring a bigger return to the county.
So, while the Big Game won’t make as much of an impact, hundreds of little ones will — and that’s fine with Richard Blalock, the CEO of RADDSports, which runs the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus, thanks to a public-private partnership between Pasco and RADD Sports.
The 98,000-sq.ft. AdventHealth Sports Arena will host a variety of club sporting events in 2021, bringing hundreds of teams and players and their parents’ wallets to Wesley Chapel.
The January calendar was filled with volleyball tournaments and gymnastics meets. Volleyball and gymnastics club seasons will roll into a basketball club season in the spring, and then the camp season over the summer. The Sports Campus is already proving to be responsible for a lot of hotel room nights and money spent at Wesley Chapel restaurants, malls and shopping centers, as nearly every weekend is booked through August and even Covid-plagued 2020 proved to be a success.
“We are not one-sport-specific, and that helps us,” Blalock says. “We made that decision by design. We can run a multitude of events here. As one season ends, another is starting.”
Blalock says in August and September of 2020, the first six weeks the Sports Campus was open, its events were responsible for 1,800 hotel room nights and just over $150,000 in sales, resulting in a $1.2-million indirect impact on the local economy.
He doesn’t have numbers yet for the rest of 2020, but Blalock says he expects to exceed those numbers in 2021. He says this while staring out his office window at construction workers laying masonry blocks on the fourth floor of the Residence Inn by Marriott hotel, which is being built adjacent to the arena on the Spots Campus site and is expected to open around the first week in August.
But, 2021 also is planned to include an NFL-style combine for pro football hopefuls, organized by former Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Yo Murphy, as well as the possibility of European soccer teams camping here prior to their fall 2021 seasons.
Hockey Tourism, Too
Thomas says the Sports Campus isn’t the only local venue to have a slew of events booked to meet pent up demand. AHCI currently is hosting a six-week United States Premier Hockey League (USPHL) camp — a college and pro showcase with hundreds of players staying at Saddlebrook Resort and playing games at AHCI — as well as in Ellenton and Brandon.
The USPHL’s Hub City concept is designed in part to make up for the loss of games and exposure events for players last year, especially from hockey areas hit particularly hard by Covid-19, like the northeastern U.S.
Because so many events were cancelled last year and so many seasons went unfinished, Thomas anticipates eager event organizers to be heading our way.
“Our event calendar looks pretty promising,” he says.
The SVB Tennis Center in Zephyrhills is attracting sports tourism with growing sports like padel (photo) and pickleball.
The county won’t recover in one year, Thomas adds. He believes the Covid-19 vaccine will help make people more comfortable when it comes to travel and attending larger events, but that change will take a while. While 2021 is expected to put the Florida Sports Coast back on track, Thomas says the tourism industry is looking at 2023 before a full recovery can probably be expected.
“It’s going to take some time,” he says. “We’re still licking our wounds.”
When the pandemic hit last year, the county was coming off a record-setting February. March began the nosedive, and when the state was shut down for much of April, the county saw its tourist tax revenue drop to below $100,000 for the month, down from $430,000 in tourist tax collected in April 2019.
There is some good news, even if it is anecdotal — Thomas says the last weekend of 2020 saw 6.2 -percent growth, with almost 40 percent hotel occupancy. “We had a really good week,” he says. “Hopefully we’ll continue to see that.”
In fact, Lisa Moore, the market director of sales for the Hilton Garden Inn Tampa-Wesley Chapel on S.R. 56 says, “We’ve been at or near 100% occupancy every weekend since the Sports Campus opened. It (2020) was a tough year, but things are looking better now.”
Pascal Collard (right) and tennis legend Nick Bollettieri (center).
When it comes to pomp and circumstance, Pascal Collard spared little expense for the Grand Opening last month of the Sarah Vande Berg (SVB) Tennis & Wellness Center in Zephyrhills.
Collard, a Wesley Chapel resident and the CEO of the facility, danced around excitedly as four skydivers made their landings at SVB, the last skydiver bringing along a large U.S. flag to kick off the national anthem.
Tennis legend Nick Bollettieri gave a short speech, as did a number of other local dignitaries, and Hope Kennedy, the CEO of the North Tampa Bay Chamber, spoke for many in attendance when she declared the SVB event, “the best grand opening ever.”
Collard, an avid skydiver himself who joked that his wife had banned him from jumping out of planes for the past three months because, “I needed to be alive for the Grand Opening,” was overjoyed at the turnout at the event, which hosted well over 100 attendees.
He shared the emotional story about the long battle to get the new facility open, and the many hours of work put in by his team of 42 employees for little to no pay.
He closed his speech by screaming, “We did iiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!”
SVB is located in Zephyrhills, just a 20-minute drive up Morris Bridge Rd. from Cross Creek Blvd.
The facility offers an elegant boutique-style experience, with an exercise room, yoga and fitness classes, massages and salt therapy and cryotherapy rooms.
The menu at the SVB Café is provided by Vesh Catering (which also catered the Grand Opening and is one of the top caterers in our area) and features healthy items like quinoa bowls and many fruit- and vegetable-based dishes.
But, racquet sports are expected to put the facility on the map. Named for Sarah Vande Berg, the former Zephyrhills High tennis player who was killed in a car accident, SVB boasts 9 clay tennis courts, including one that can serve as a center court for special events, with spectator seating.
There also are two hard courts, eight pickleball courts and four padel courts. Pascal is hoping to make the facility the national headquarters for padel, a game that merges tennis and racquetball and is popular in Spain, Portugal and Argentina. Pascal says Padel is the fastest growing sport in the world, and that pickleball is the fastest growing in the U.S.
A New Local Option
In the past, Saddlebrook Resort was the only local facility with enough tennis courts to host pro events, like the Women’s Fed Cup in 2017, and various International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments on the USTA Pro Circuit, which features players trying to gain the professional ranking points they need to compete on the major pro tours.
However, SVB is now another option. It has booked its first tournament, the SVB Championships, which will be held January 25-31, 2021. The field for the $25,000 USTA Pro Circuit women’s event will feature 16 doubles teams and 32 singles players.
USTA Pro Circuit events often attract players ranked in the Top 100 in the world, and even some in the top 50. A recent ITF tournament in Tyler, TX, attracted U.S. standout Shelby Rogers (No. 55 in the world), Japan’s Misaki Doi (#81) and up-and-coming U.S. star Caty McNally (#120).
The tournament is one of the first tennis events scheduled in Florida for the new year.
SVB also is home to the United Global Academy, a private school offering athletics and specialized training for student athletes in and around Zephyrhills. The Academy offers an academic environment for those training in various sports like tennis, golf and even boxing.
For more info, or to sign up for a membership, visit SVBTennisCenter.com or see the ad on pg. 5 of our latest issue!
At the SVB Tennis Center VIP preview on June 27, (l.-r) Bo Sun, Mark Shepherd, Gary Blissett and CEO Pascal Collard were among those who greeted dozens of well-wishers.
Pascal Collard has been pitching an exciting vision for the Sarah Vande Berg (SVB) Tennis Center just outside of Wesley Chapel in Zephyrhills for some time, but on June 27, he was able to show some people how that vision is shaping up.
Collard and his staff hosted a VIP event, complete with beer, wine and hors d’oeuvres, to announce that Advent Health has come aboard as a major sponsor and to show off the new center, which he says should open in August.
While none of the rooms are filled just yet and the tennis, pickleball and padel courts haven’t yet been surfaced, Collard filled in the empty spots with his excitement.
And, with Covid-19 cases in Florida rising sharply in recent weeks, Collard promised one thing — it will be safe.
“I hate to say ‘most sanitized place in America,’ but that’s what we’re shooting for,” Collard said, adding that the center bought 1,000 face masks and put the staff through hours of classes and presentations to keep the facility virus-free.
The indoor portion of the facility will have plenty of space and feature an indoor restaurant focusing in healthy foods — think air-fried fries and bento boxes with edible flowers — with popular local Chef Mark Vesh of Vesh Catering designing the menu.
There also will be yoga, cryotherapy, a salt room, an exercise room and licensed massage tables. The all-around focus of the facility is on health, from exercise and playing tennis to recovery to refueling the body.
Collard also helped create a school — United Global Academy — offering an accredited curriculum for athletes training in tennis, golf, soccer and one of Collard’s own personal passions — skydiving.
And of course, there will be plenty of racquet sports. The SVB Tennis Center will have four padel courts, eight pickleball courts, two hard tennis courts with U.S. Open surfaces, and eight Har-Tru tennis courts with underground irrigation. Collard says there also will be a grass court: “It’s like a little garden.”
A drone shot of the progress on the center, which has a planned Aug. 15 opening date. Photos by Charmaine George.
There will be a viewing court with seating up to 1,000, and able to expand for bigger tournaments to more than 3,500.
The 30,000-sq.-ft. indoor facility with have four tennis courts but can be converted to accommodate soccer, weddings and even concerts.
If everything goes as Collard hopes, the facility will open Aug. 15.
“It’s really starting to come to together, you can just see it,” Collard says. “We’re pretty excited about it.”
For more info SVB Tennis Center (6585 Simons Rd., Zephyrhills) memberships and how to join, please visit svbtenniscenter.com or call (813) 361-6660.
