Sarah Vande Berg Tennis Center’s Grand(est) Opening!

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!

Sarah Vande Berg Tennis Center In Zephyrhills Nears Completion!

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.

Tennis Center Adds To ‘Sports Coast’ Brand

As large trucks filled with dirt and tall cranes roll by a flattened lot, local Wesley Chapel tennis guru and businessman Pascal Collard smiles.

The trucks are slowly but surely allowing Pascal’s vision come to life.

The parking lot is there, he says, pointing to his left. Tennis courts, pickleball courts and padel courts over there, surrounding the tennis center.

And, what about way over there, all the way to the right?

Pascal says that will be a 30,000-sq.-ft. indoor training facility with space for both more tennis courts and removable turf for other sports.

“It is beautiful, no?,” Pascal asks.

The Sarah Vande Berg Memorial Tennis & Wellbeing Center in Zephyrhills  (at 6585 Simons Rd.) has broken ground, and is expected to open in late spring or early summer of 2020.

When it is done, the $4.9-million project will feature 11 tennis courts, including a main court with spectator seating, eight pickleball courts — one of the fastest growing sports in America — and four courts for padel, another racquet sport that can best be described as a cross between, well, almost every other racquet sport.

The 7,400-sq.-ft. indoor tennis center will house a fitness and rehabilitation center, a restaurant and café, a salt room, cryotherapy, a pro shop and a kid’s club.

The tennis center is another feather in the “Florida’s Sports Coast” cap, joining AdventHealth Center Ice, Saddlebrook Resort and the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County, as the area continues to transform itself from ranches to recreation.

“It fits right in with (our new) Florida Sports Coast vision,” says Adam Thomas, the county’s tourism director. “This will make an impact.”

The tennis complex is a public-private partnership between the City of Zephyrhills, the Sarah Vande Berg (SVB) Tennis Foundation  and Pascal, the president of Tennis P.R.O., LLC, and the director — and driving force — behind the new facility.

It is the hope of Pascal, who ran the renowned tennis program at Saddlebrook Resort from 2003-06 and lives in Estancia, that the SVB Memorial Tennis Center reaches far and wide into the surrounding communities to help bring it to life.

“It is something that people want,” says Pascal. “I hear it all the time. It will be a place where mom can do fitness and dad can do tennis, or vice versa, and the kids can do the Kids Club, or daycare. That is huge.”

Pascal says he also is teaming up with Buttermilk Provisions owner Dana Morris for a restaurant at the tennis center as well.

“We think this will be something special and unique,” says Pascal, who never stops smiling as he describes the project.

The tennis center, which is located off Eiland Blvd. just a few miles north of eastern Wesley Chapel, is named for former Zephyrhills High tennis standout Sarah Vande Berg, who died in an automobile accident at the age of 21 in 2015.

It will be equipped to host regional (like college) and even national events like United States Tennis Association (USTA) and International Tennis Federation (ITF) tournaments, and also will provide a place for area residents looking for courts on which to play. Pascal would like to see the area active in USTA league tennis, where Saddlebrook Resort may field an occasional team limited by membership restrictions.

It also will offer instructional tennis for children, and training for the more serious players. 

And, speaking of memberships, Pascal is hoping to sign up hundreds at a price he said will be fair and less expensive than the clubs in the area. Depending on what type of membership you buy, it also could include membership to the Silverado Golf & Country Club, which is adjacent to the tennis complex.

While tennis will be the central focus of the facility, Pascal also has formed the United Global Academy, which will be an online school limited to 32 students from a variety of sports, similar to what IMG Academy in Bradenton offers but on a smaller scale initially. Mark Shepherd, former director of student services at Saddlebrook Prep on the resort’s property, will help run the academic side.

Pascal has reached into Wesley Chapel’s sporting community to help develop those athletes, who will be able to train in the 30,000-sq.-ft. indoor facility, which can accommodate four tennis courts and a synthetic turf soccer field.

“Why not create a sports association?,” he says. “Get all the best ex-athletes in the area to come together once a month to promote sports to kids…kids who cant afford it!”

Athletes will be able to receive training from coaches like former English Premier League Soccer player and local club coach Gary Blissett, former New Orleans Saints lineman Mel Williams, Silverado Golf & Country Club golf pro Sean Klotz and others.

“The vision is to bring the community together by offering a family-friendly experience,” says Pascal, who most recently was the tennis director at Merion Cricket Club, a private club in Haverford, PA, with more than 2,000 members. “There will truly be something for everyone here.”

For more information, visit the SVBTennisCenter.com.

BG Tennis Focuses on Teaching Young Players With Low-Compression Balls

Occasionally, a younger tennis player will come along with the natural ability to accurately and correctly hit a regulation yellow tennis ball.

Most often, however, that is not the case. Newer tennis players, especially those that are younger, struggle with the bounciness of the tennis ball, the weight of it, and lack the ability to control it.

They resort to using any means necessary to strike the ball, which usually leads to hurried, out-of-sync and technically-flawed swings of desperation.

Tennis professional Bobby Gillespie, who runs BG Tennis at The Ridge and Estancia communities in Wiregrass Ranch, as well as at Live Oak Preserve in New Tampa and at Lake Jovita in Dade City, says he has seen young, overmatched beginners just trying to survive against the yellow balls too often, which is why he emphatically extols the virtues of using low-compression balls, and shorter courts, to properly teach them the game.

Most parents who get their children into tennis only know one kind of tennis ball, but Gillespie is quick to introduce them to red-, orange- and green-dot low-compression balls, which he calls revolutionary teaching tools.

The red-dot ball has 75 percent less ball speed than a regular yellow tennis ball, while the orange-dot ball is 50 percent slower and the green-dot ball is 25 percent slower.

The allows younger players to focus on technique, footwork and properly addressing each shot, not just hitting a ball back over a net. They can take full swings, as the ball is designed not to bounce as high or travel as far. Gillespie says that a beginner’s full swing at a yellow ball is likely to send it into the nearest fence.

“Whenever I have the opportunity, I try to sell the concept of these low-compression balls. It is something I am very passionate about,” says Gillespie, a former junior champion where he grew up in Shropshire, a county in England, and later a national university champion at Loughborough University in Loughborough, England, where he also earned a degree in sports management.

While Gillespie says he didn’t need low-compression balls as a youngster himself because he was naturally gifted, very few beginners can claim that.

“I’ve been here since 2005, and when I got here, no one was using them,” he says of the low-compression balls. “All the tennis coaches were using just the yellow balls, and you had to just deal with it. I was a bit confused why we were doing that.”

Gillespie was the head tennis pro at Cheval Country Club and later at Lake Jovita Country Club before starting BG Tennis in 2008 and developing what he says is a proven teaching formula to develop the proper tennis strokes in beginners while also making it fun.

Mixing a career of tennis knowledge with likability and a sense of humor, Gillespie teaches roughly 120 kids every week, as well as 80 or so adults. His progressive clinics are once a week, and affordable by tennis standards at just $65 a month – which is the price a one-hour lesson will cost you at most country clubs.

Get Them Started Early

Ideally, Gillespie says, kids in first through fifth grade are at the best ages to begin learning tennis.

Joe Caswell, who is nine years old, and his brother, six-year-old Max, have been with BG Tennis since August. They competed against each other on a recent Tuesday night at The Ridge, as their younger brother Luke, who is five, helped pick up balls.

“I feel like they have made a ton of progress since we’ve been here,” says their mother, Amanda, who lives in Meadow Pointe III and has tried other coaches in the area. “I’ve seen a huge difference in their play. I just think they are so much more consistent, and (coach) stays on them about the little things.”

Amanda says she is a fan of the low- compression balls. They allow her sons to move to the ball, position their feet, set up and deliver the proper stroke. In the past, it was easier to develop bad habits adapting their swings to the harder-to-handle yellow balls.

More important, she says, is that the low-compression balls also stay on the court, which is marked off to a shorter length of 60 feet, and allow her boys an opportunity to rally and play out points.

“It’s more of playing the actual game for them than before,” Amanda says. “They can hit it back and forth to each other and play points (instead of just chasing balls around).”

That’s what Nikki Lang, who is eight, enjoys most. She teamed up with Gillespie during a mini-game at The Ridge, earning a high-five from her coach after they beat the Caswell boys and 11-year-old Sloane Guinn.

“I like being able to hit the balls,” she says. “It is easier, and makes it fun to play tennis.”

Gillespie holds local tournaments with the low-compression balls, and starts each point by feeding the ball to one of the players as opposed to having them serve to one another. Serving is a skill that Gillespie says is generally too advanced for younger players to learn right away and slows play down.

He says that his last tournament in October drew 80 players, and he also produces local rankings for his players to use to measure their improvement.

“The goal is to get them to a rallying situation as soon as possible, because as soon as they start rallying, then the game becomes far more dynamic for them,” Gillespie says.

Gillespie, rated an Elite Professional with the United States Professional Tennis Association (USPTA), says he is choosy about who he hires to help him coach at BG Tennis.

He recently hired Bill Zeedyk, a former college player who was helping run the youth program at the Sports Club at Hunter’s Green Country Club, and Matt Holsopple, who also has coached at Hunter’s Green, Saddlebrook and at the high school level, and is highly regarded for his work with younger tennis players.

“We have a formula for how to teach kids,” Gillespie says. “No one is doing their own thing. It’s a template, and it’s progressive and fun. If you are not learning and having fun, then you are not going to stay in the game.”

Gillespie thinks that using lower compression balls with beginners also keeps them in the game longer. He thinks out of every 100 kids who start learning with a yellow ball, only five will survive and keep playing the game after awhile.

But, take 100 kids and teach them with low-compression balls, however, and Gillespie guesses that 95 of them will successfully learn the game and stick with it.

“Tennis is a game for life,” Gillespie says. “But you have to teach the kids the right way. My dream is to introduce as many people in the area to these balls. If we can get them on the court to start with, we can keep them.”

BG Tennis has new groups starting all the time, and will often allow first-timers to try it out first before signing up. For more information, visit BGTennis.net, email BGTennis@ymail.com or text Gillespie at (813) 476-5787.

Tennis Event At Hunter’s Green On June 23 To Benefit Victim Of Lyme Disease

For years, whatever it was that was ailing Courtney Krysa befuddled doctors.

Fatigue and horrible joint pain had transformed her life into a difficult struggle. Even when she was able to play soccer for Freedom High, Courtney would sometimes pass out. She developed a heart arrhythmia, several neurological deficits and debilitating arthritis.

That finally led to a definitive diagnosis — Courtney had Advanced Neurological Lyme disease, likely the result of a tick bite she was treated for in 2008.

Although she wasn’t diagnosed with Lyme disease at the time of the bite — never developing the bulls-eye rash that is often the first symptom of the disease — she has suffered with the consequences and a series of setbacks ever since.

While there is no actual cure for the disease, and very few effective treatments, after years of searching, Katie Krysa thinks…hopes…she has found the answer.

But mostly, for the first time in a while, Katie says she has found hope.

On Saturday, June 23, at noon, at the Hunter’s Green Country Club Sports Club, friends of Katie will host “A Twist of Lyme” tennis social to raise money for Courtney’s continued treatment.

Katie, a Tampa Palms resident who plays league tennis with teams based out of West Meadows, is not surprised the New Tampa tennis community is stepping forward to help cover the costs of Courtney’s treatments. Katie says she already has exhausted her bank account by spending $20,000 for six weeks of the treatment; another 18-24 weeks is likely needed.

“I’ve relied on many of my tennis friends during this entire process,” she says. “They have been so great.”
A minimum $30 donation is requested to be part of the social, which also will have silent auctions and raffles.

The first 50 people to sign up will receive a tennis towel, and everyone who plays gets lunch, two margaritas and an afternoon of tennis and music, provided by D.J. Robby Rob.
Once a vibrant, energetic teenager, her mother says Lyme disease has ravaged Courtney’s body, penetrating her nervous system and damaging her kidneys. Courtney missed most of her senior year at Freedom, and couldn’t attend graduation ceremonies.

Katie says she has spent over $100,000 visiting clinics in Cleveland and Nashville, as well as visiting dozens of specialists, with every potential solution, most of them not covered by insurance, leading to a dead end.

Ready to give up, Katie says she discovered David Minkoff, M.D., an alternative medicine specialist, at the LifeWorks Wellness Center in Clearwater.

LifeWorks specializes in treating chronic illnesses, and Katie says she has been encouraged by the early results.

Courtney, who has spent much of the past few years bed-ridden and in a wheelchair, can today walk 25 feet without assistance, and has displayed cognitive improvements.

“I didn’t know where to go anymore before I found this treatment,” Katie says. “I didn’t have a lot of hope. I just thought I was going to have to watch her slowly get worse.”

After years of disappointment, Katie is optimistic her last hope can help restore to Courtney some of the quality of life she once enjoyed.

To read more about Courtney’s story and register for the A Twist of Lyme tennis social, visit HopeRisingInc.org. The HGCC Sports Club is located at 18050 Hunter’s Oak Ct.