South Dakota Tennis Players Petition City Council For $2.5 Million To Replace Cracked Courts After Student Injury
- Mitchell, South Dakota tennis players have asked the city council to fund a $2.5 million replacement for eight cracked courts at Hitchcock Park after a high school student fell and suffered a head injury.
- The Mitchell Tennis Association has already put up $20,000 of its own money and is chasing a $240,000 U.S. Tennis Association grant, but the city left the project out of its preliminary 2027 budget.
- Mitchell’s tennis community covered 40 percent of the cost when four courts were added in 2016, and the association wants the city to match that same level of commitment now.
A Student’s Head Injury Forced The Question The City Keeps Avoiding
Jacob Dahme stood in front of the Mitchell City Council on September 14 and told members the tennis courts at Hitchcock Park were past the point of patience. “We’re 11th hour, maybe a little past,” said Dahme, president of the Mitchell Tennis Association. Behind him sat roughly 20 Mitchell Kernel and youth tennis players who had come to watch the council decide whether their courts would finally get fixed.
The eight east-side courts at Hitchcock Park have raised edges along their cracks, a defect players say has turned practice into a hazard. Dahme pointed to a recent incident in which a high school student fell on the surface and suffered a head injury. “Does it take one lawsuit to really get the ball moving?” he asked the council.
Plans Are Drawn Up. The Money Isn’t There.
Plans to replace the courts already exist. What the city hasn’t done is set aside capital to pay for them. Reconstruction has been priced at $1,138,000 for four of the eight courts, or roughly $2.5 million for all eight. Four of the courts were built in 2016 and recently resurfaced, leaving the other four as the most urgent repair.
The council’s special work session on September 14 covered a range of public facility upgrades, and members gave the go-ahead to several additions at Cadwell Sports Complex for the proposed 2027 budget. The Hitchcock Park tennis courts did not make that list. The city’s annual budget is finalized and adopted in November, leaving a narrow window for the association’s request to land before the numbers are locked in.
The Association Is Raising Its Own Money, But It Wants A Partner
The Mitchell Tennis Association is seeking full funding for all eight court replacements, and it isn’t waiting on the city to move first. The group has already committed $20,000 toward the project and plans to keep fundraising. It’s also pursuing a U.S. Tennis Association grant worth up to $240,000, calculated at $35,000 per court, with the city expected to learn the grant’s status in December, according to Parks and Recreation Director Kevin Nelson.
The Mitchell School District has floated a $75,000 contribution of its own. Mayor Jordan Hanson acknowledged he had asked the district for an amount he described as “way too much money.” No formal request for the tennis association to contribute has been made by the city, according to Dahme, even as the association keeps raising funds on its own.
Dahme told the council the tennis community had covered 40 percent of the cost when four courts were added to Hitchcock Park in 2016. He wants the city to treat this project the same way. “Without any form of a commitment from the city, it’s just, will we even get to it eventually?” he said.
A Teenager Makes The Safety Case Herself
Mia Larson, a Mitchell High School senior who has played at Hitchcock Park from sixth grade on, told the council what the cracked surface looks like from a player’s perspective. “They are not very safe to play on because younger girls can roll their ankle or have an injury, and we want them to keep coming back because we want a safe environment for them,” Larson said.
Dahme also told the council the association recently approved holding the Mitchell Tennis Classic as a USTA-sanctioned tournament on a one-year trial basis, aimed at drawing more players and visitors to the city. A sanctioned tournament on courts with known safety defects puts the funding fight in sharper focus for the players who would host it.
Baseball Got Funded Without A Fight. Tennis Didn’t.
Dahme drew a direct comparison to how the council treated other facility requests at the same meeting. Cadwell Stadium is set to receive $225,000 to replace a perimeter fence dating to the 1970s, with rotting wooden posts and leaning sections officials called a safety concern. Drake Field is in line for $13,365 to replace a chain-link fence that has curled up enough for balls to roll underneath, a problem Councilman Dan Sabers said had been patched with steel hooks pounded into the ground. “It’s an embarrassment to Drake Field,” Sabers said.
The preliminary 2027 budget for Cadwell Sports Complex already includes $150,000 to remodel the Drake Field restrooms, $50,000 to replace the backstop and dugouts at the Field A baseball diamond, $20,000 to tuckpoint the Cadwell Stadium dugouts and replace sidewalks, and $10,000 for a mower, among other line items. Dahme noted that the baseball requests moved forward without pushback, while the tennis project sits without a commitment, even as a pending grant and a school district offer already sit on the table. “It wasn’t like they were asking for peanuts,” he said. He compared the cracked courts to a damaged baseball infield: “We’re playing on it. This would be like somebody’s got a crater in the infield would be my comparison.”
What This Means For Players Waiting On Courts Elsewhere
Mitchell’s fight over eight courts is a small-scale version of a conflict playing out in park systems and school districts across the country as racket sports keep drawing new players onto aging public infrastructure built decades before the current boom. Cities that built four or eight courts a generation ago are now being asked to fund full rebuilds, often while pickleball and padel proposals compete for the same parks budgets. Grant programs like the U.S. Tennis Association’s court funding, capped here at $35,000 per court, can close part of the gap, but they rarely cover a full rebuild on their own, which is why local tennis associations increasingly find themselves raising five and six figures in matching money just to get a city to act.
Mitchell’s own history shows the model can work. The 40 percent match the tennis community provided for the 2016 courts is the template Dahme is now asking the city to repeat at a larger scale. Whether the council follows through will be decided when the 2027 budget is adopted in November.
The Clock Is Running Toward November
For now, Mitchell’s tennis players are left drilling and competing on courts the association’s own president says are past due for replacement. The U.S. Tennis Association grant decision lands in December, a month after the city adopts its budget, which means the council could commit to the project without yet knowing whether outside money is coming, or wait and risk missing another budget cycle. Dahme and the players who packed the September 14 meeting made clear which option they’re pushing for. Whether the city agrees will shape where Mitchell’s next generation of players trains, and how safely.
Sources:
