For the first month of its season, the Elk Grove girls tennis team had no choice but to pack its rackets and hit the road to Harper College. 

Why? They needed a court.

And with the end of Labor Day weekend, the new Elk Grove Tennis Courts were finally fixed and ready for athletes.

“I am really excited because there won’t be any cracks anymore,” senior Nicole Castro said. “They’re so nice and pretty.”

According to Township High School District 214 Board of Education agenda from April 2022, the cost of the tennis court renovation project totaled $655,000. This was the price of a full court rebuild, different from the repavings completed in previous years.

Before the renovations, Elk Grove’s tennis court had numerous large cracks that proved to be both an inconvenience in games, thanks to erratic ball movement. Prior to the new courts being installed, balls would fly wild because they’d land on cracks and get redirected, causing players to get tripped up.

There weren’t any reported injuries related to the cracked courts.

While the courts were still under construction, varsity girls tennis coach Lindsey Rapinchuk hosted tryouts at Rolling Meadows using their courts and tried to run it as normally as possible. With the Harper arrangement, the tennis team ran its practice from 3:20 p.m. to 5:50 p.m. so athletes could catch the 6 p.m. athletic bus back at Elk Grove.

Senior tennis player Angie Orozco said it was a difficult arrangement, as they’d only have an hour of play as opposed to two hours of play.

“We had to adapt to that to make things quicker,” she said.