In-between in Barrie - OT Magazine

In a town of hockey stars and figure skating’s elite Olympians it’s easy and understandable for aspiring tennis players to feel alone and unrecognized, to question their desire, and to wonder if maybe it’s their environment which is preventing their success. But perhaps that’s not such a bad thing; consider that in this day and age of North Americas silver spooned athletes, Barrie’s blue-collar mentality, basic facilities, and apparent disinterest in the sport may actually be a recipe for success rather then an excuse for failure.

There’s something good to be said about having less. There’s tangible value to training in obscurity, hidden and removed from the limelight. It makes an athlete hungry. Think Apollo Creed in ROCKY III when he brings the defeated Stallion away from the cameras to the seediest of gyms in an effort to find the fire again. Having less reveals the truest of intentions and thins out pretenders from the crowd. Training in Barrie, for those with big league dreams, is a bit like being part of a secret army of clandestine soldiers grinding their guts out behind the iron curtain during The Cold War 80’s, only here that war is waged on desperate public courts with little promise of recognition.

Barrie’s also not Siberia, it’s close enough to delve into the competitive furor of the GTA without being under the microscope of it. From Barrie you can slide in and out of the maelstrom of tennis in Toronto, reaping the benefits of world-class coaching, and talent, while still being able to seclude yourself back to the drawing board, unperturbed, and without the incessant scrutiny of others.

Tennis certainly isn’t booming in this boomtown. Although it’s enjoying a recent burst in growth it still remains far below the radar and rarely in the local paper. Public courts are often vandalized, they’re over-run with weeds, littered with broken glass, cracks scatter the surface like scars from a thirsty desert and its not unlikely to find a net torched with its black wax all that remains between two naked posts. In Japan even the non-tennis-playing kids pack a racket with them to school because they want to be seen with one, in Barrie you’re more likely to be teased for doing the same thing.

But it’s precisely this backwater, small-town mentality that keeps court competition a rarity (it’s never a problem finding an open court in Barrie) and its what gives Barrie charm. It’s not all hard-nosed, sweat and grime in this town, there is too a wonderful softness to Barrie’s tennis community.

During the winter months when driving up the 400 highway is a bit like walking through the back panel of the wardrobe and into Narnia, John Wellar and his family run Barrie North Winter Tennis, a four court indoor bubble. BNWT is the kind of place you can forget your racket, shoes, wallet and reading glasses and be rest assured they’ll all still be there when you come back the next day. Members all know each other, routines are set and comforting and John’s mother even bakes cookies and apple pies. The club is a warm light during a cold winter that stays on to welcome players perfecting serves in the off-season. 

In the summer Barrie Community Tennis Club runs a comprehensive schedule featuring programing for all ages and levels. Situated in the center of town, BCTC is on the northern edge of Queens Park across from where the old hospital used to be. With giant trees littering the park, a baseball diamond, a meandering stream and the red brick Armory along the parks southern edge it’s like playing tennis in a Norman Rockwell painting. On a hot August night with a hazed yellow sun streaming through giant oaks to the sound of Armory bagpipes while USOPEN matches are being played inside the quaint wooden clubhouse, you’d have thought you had died and wound up in tennis heaven.   

Minutes north of town and offering a completely different experience is The Midhurst Tennis Club where Robin Hood himself could spring from the bush. The wilderness that surrounds the village of Midhurst besieges the club, in spring when the leaves are young and fresh the forest emits an emerald glow while in summer the trees provide shelter from the wind causing on-court temperatures to flirt with 50. While BCTC has an urban soundtrack of sirens, picnic chatter, and playground laughter, in Midhurst its birds, insects and the rustle of wind.

Midhurst is also home to The Simcoe Tennis Academy, which offers modern qualified instruction, leagues, camps, tournaments and wheelchair tennis. At this years high school OFSAA qualifier, all four boy semi-finalists were part of ST’s academy, while the girls draw too was littered with ST talent, including its winner. The closest school in proximity to the academy, St. Joes, whose team is coached by one of ST’s head pros; Michele May, won the overall team title after 17 years of dominance by nearby Collingwood. Two of the National U10 Team members hail from the ST program, while a line has begun to form for players who have the freedom to choose from a list of interested NCAA schools offering scholarships south of the border. With the first crop of players who began the academy at age 5 still only 9 years old, the full results of ST’s impact are years from being seen.

In terms of tennis Barrie is a dichotomy offering both access and seclusion, it’s an enigma, a sort of in-between place. It’s a hockey town after all, a place where tennis is quite happily unnoticed, quite happily… in-between.