{"id":4171,"date":"2019-10-01T12:55:49","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T16:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4171"},"modified":"2019-10-01T20:47:56","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T00:47:56","slug":"ryan-fincham-on-tennis-in-berkeley-springs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4171","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Fincham on Tennis in Berkeley Springs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are three sets of tennis courts in Morgan County.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0NaHGuazsHs\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One set at Cacapon State Park.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One set at Biser Street in Berkeley Springs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And one set at Coolfont.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All are not regulation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All are not in great shape.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the Berkeley Springs High School tennis team, this means that there are no home matches. All matches are played away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ryan Fincham and the Morgan County Tennis Association are out to change that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fincham is the chair of the Morgan County Tennis Association (MCTA).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">His son Haden is now a sophomore on the Berkeley Springs High School tennis team.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For a couple of years now, Fincham and MCTA have been working to get the county to build new regulation tennis courts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cYears ago when my son started playing tennis, I realized \u2013 there is not one regulation sized playable court in the whole county,\u201d Fincham told <em>This Week in Morgan County with Russell Mokhiber.<\/em> \u201cThat just blew my mind and that\u2019s what started me on this journey.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fincham says his campaign to secure playable regulation size tennis courts back in 2015 when he walked into the Board of Education meeting and signed up for public comment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI stood before the Board of Education and I said \u2013 we have a tennis team, we have had one forever and we have no courts. Let\u2019s build \u2018em. And they all shook their heads and agreed. But there was just no funding.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fincham gave power point presentations to Parks and Rec and the County Commission and to the Board of Education.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI got some good advice about two years ago,&#8221; Fincham says. &#8220;The person said to me \u2013 Ryan, in a small community with limited funding, it takes a bulldog. If you want something done, someone has to be the bulldog. I went home that night and I said \u2013 I guess I\u2019m the bulldog. And I\u2019ve been bulldogging it ever since.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fincham says it takes four courts to host a high school match and they will cost about $250,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In September 2018, the School Board voted to allow four courts to be built next to the Warm Springs Middle School soccer field. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That opened the door to funding, Fincham said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fincham has raised money from the U.S. Tennis Association (USTA) Mid Atlantic Region, from the Morgan County Commission, Parks and Rec, <a href=\"https:\/\/mocotennis.org\/support-mcta\">and from individual donors online.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, far the Morgan County Tennis Association has raised $160,000 of the needed $250,000. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A big chunk of the $160,000 came from an anonymous donor, Fincham said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He seeking to hit $200,000 at which points he hopes to apply for a $50,000 matching grant from the U.S. Tennis Association national. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey like to be the last source of funding for a new facility,\u201d Fincham said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last week, the Board of Education rejected a $551,000 bid to build the courts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fincham says that he hopes that when bidding is re-opened by January 2020, a bid more in line with the $250,000 figure will be made and the courts will be built by the summer of 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fincham says that The Morgan County Tennis Association is a non-profit whose officers are volunteers. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are three sets of tennis courts in Morgan County. One set at Cacapon State Park. One set at Biser Street in Berkeley Springs. And one set at Coolfont. All are not regulation.\u00a0 All are not in great shape. For &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=4171\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4171"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4174,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171\/revisions\/4174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}