CLEVELAND — The tennis courts at Thurgood Marshall haven’t been in the best shape and Ben Moore, a board member for Changeover, a nonprofit organization, explained what they looked like.

What You Need To Know

  • Thurgood Marshall Recreation Center's tennis courts are getting redone

  • The nonprofit, Changeover, is the one providing the resources for the courts to get a makeover

  • The hope is that it brings more people to the game of tennis

“They’ve got cracks, they’ve got dead spots, there’s you know places where water pulls up that makes it really hard for the community to use these courts in a consistent manner,” Moore said.

Changeover has helped give the tennis courts a makeover. 

“We wanted to come out and resurface them to try just make it more accessible to the community and easier for programs at Thurgood Marshall to use,” Moore said.

Some of those programs include Advantage Cleveland, which is a nonprofit that combines education and tennis. Case Western Reserve University Men’s Head Tennis Coach, Todd Wojtkowski, is on the board of Advantage Cleveland. He explained that the hope is for courts to help grow the sport of tennis.

“Now they’ll be shiny, brand new, clean and again I’m like a 12-year-old an 11-year-old I show up and I’m like ‘wow look at what they’re doing to help us out, you know, these are the kinds of things we have to keep doing,” Wojtkowski said.

Changeover has plans to continue to do this for other courts in Northeast Ohio. Moore said the plan is to redo courts in a Northeast Ohio location every year.

“It’s really important for us to try to make the court not an obstacle for people to play tennis, right? So that should be the easiest thing for them to get access to,” Moore said.

The courts at Thurgood Marshall Recreation Center will be finished by early next week.