Schenectady

Sportime Randall’s Island Named Private/Commercial Club of the Year by Racquet Sports Industry (RSI) - RSI’s Annual Champions of Tennis Awards Honor Excellence in the Industry 

New York, NY (January 13, 2024) – Sportime Randall’s Island, a premier tennis and pickleball facility located on Randall’s Island in New York City, has been named the Private/Commercial Club of the Year by Racquet Sports Industry.

This recognition celebrates Sportime Randall’s Island’s commitment to excellence in facilities, programming, community engagement and innovation in the racquet sports industry. Located in Randall’s Island Park in Manhattan, the facility, which Sportime constructed in 2009 at a cost of over $20 million, just underwent a $50+ million expansion and renovation. Spanning more than 260,000 square feet, Sportime Randall’s Island includes 29 hard and soft-surface tennis courts in climate-controlled buildings and year-round and seasonal air structures, making it the largest indoor tennis facility in the world. The club also features six dedicated pickleball courts, four dedicated U10 courts, an athletic training center for group and private sport-specific training, a full service café, a well-stocked pro shop, flexible event spaces, locker rooms, and multiple, beautiful lobbies and lounges.

As the flagship location of the John McEnroe Tennis Academy (JMTA), Sportime Randall’s Island is shaping the next generation of elite junior players. JMTA consistently produces a high percentage of national championship competitors, with many players earning scholarships to play tennis at prestigious colleges and universities, including Ivy League institutions and top NCAA programs. 

Sportime Randall’s Island, in partnership with the Johnny Mac Tennis Project (JMTP), a nonprofit organization founded by tennis icon John McEnroe in 2012 to break down economic, racial and social barriers through tennis, delivers free weekly tennis programs to more than 4,000 participants each year: young people from some of NYC’s most under-resourced communities. Since 2012, more than $10.7 million has been awarded in scholarships to youth who lack the financial means to pursue tennis at the highest levels, providing them with the opportunity to chase their tennis dreams and change their lives.

“We’re thrilled that Sportime Randall’s Island has been named Facility of the Year by Racquet Sports Industry,” says Claude Okin, President and CEO of Sportime. “As a lifelong New Yorker, who learned to play tennis in NYC parks, creating this one-of-a-kind, urban tennis hub, in the city that we love, has been a passion project and a dream come true. We are very proud of our flagship facility, not just because it is a great business, with a great future, and has burnished our Company’s legacy in NYC, but because of the impact that its programs, along with our charitable efforts in NYC, have made, and will continue to make, in the lives of NYC kids.”

Sportime Randall’s Island is open 365 days a year and offers instructional and competitive tennis, pickleball and athletic training programs, including JMTA, as well as summer and school-break training camps, for juniors and adults of all ages and levels, provided by its team of world-class directors and coaches. In addition to private and group instruction, seasonal and hourly court rentals are available. 

About Sportime

Since 1994, Sportime has been proud to operate the finest tennis and sports facilities in New York State. Sportime’s 15 club locations most recently expanded to include the iconic Port Washington Tennis Academy, now Sportime Port Washington. Sportime currently offers 192 indoor and outdoor tennis courts and 70 pickleball courts, as well as rinks, turf, camps, gyms and more, at sites across Long Island, in NYC, in Westchester and in the NY Capital Region. Sportime clubs are state-of-the-art, yet affordable, and feature the best tennis, pickleball, sports and camp facilities and programs, including the John McEnroe Tennis Academy (JMTA) and Sportime Volleyball Club (VBC). Sportime clubs serve individuals of every age and athletic ability, 365 days a year. Learn more: www.sportimeny.com.

News Coverage:

• City Biz - https://www.citybiz.co/article/648588/sportime-randalls-island-named-private-commercial-club-of-the-year-by-racquet-sports-industry/ 
• AP - https://apnews.com/press-release/ein-presswire-newsmatics/john-mcenroe-new-york-city-iceland-tennis-f27ca83451f660f3301e1c01f6939433 
   

Throughout October, SPORTIME Pickleball proudly hosted “Pickle in Pink” events in partnership with the Susan G. Komen Foundation, dedicated to raising awareness and funds for breast cancer research. We invited our community to join in support through a variety of events, including Open Plays, Tournaments, MLP Style events, and Up/Downs. With 50% of proceeds donated, we are thrilled to have contributed over $2,800 to this important cause. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped make a difference!

SPORTIME Pickleball is proud to become a Platinum partner of DUPR, the world’s most accurate rating platform for pickleball players. Over 1 Million players use DUPR, providing them with real-time match results and assessments, access to historical match data, and the ability to network with other players within the pickleball community.

SPORTIME will be offering special DUPR-rated Open Play sessions and tournaments at multiple facilities this fall, ensuring that each event will include players of the same level, based upon their DUPR rating.

If you haven’t already set up your free DUPR account, sign up now at https://www.dupr.com/  and be sure to select SPORTIME as your home club to get started! Click here to visit our webpage.
 

Venus Williams—world champion, Bombas investor, and now sock designer—co-created our new limited edition collection of All-Purpose Socks.

For every pair purchased from this collection, Bombas will donate another pair to organizations using sports to engage under-resourced youth, like Johnny Mac Tennis Project and Play Like a Girl. To further celebrate this collab, Bombas will also donate 20 scholarships through these programs to help more kids play the sports they love. 

Find out more

Dear SPORTIME Schenectady Members, Parents and Players:

With the current 2023-2024 indoor tennis and pickleball season in full swing, we hope that you have been enjoying your experience at SPORTIME Schenectady. After the major damage our facility suffered from the fire in April 2023, we are proud both to have been able to find a way to continue operations, after a very brief interruption, and of the tremendous progress we have made reconstructing our facility. We appreciate your patience, support and understanding while we complete the rebuild, which is going very well, but taking a few more months than we had hoped, as often happens with construction projects. We trust that the inconveniences that many of you may have experienced, or may still be experiencing, will be well worth the final result: the best and most modern racket sports facility in the Capital Region! Of course, we are doing all we can to complete the project as quickly as possible.

It has been brought to our attention that some false and mean-spirited rumors are being spread about SPORTIME, including that the club is being sold and that the fire is some sort of insurance scam. We have no idea who would make up such rumors, or why, but just in case anybody has heard this nonsense, it is just that. As a reminder, the fire was caused by a collision between a utility truck and a power line, which caused an electrical surge and explosive fire in our server room. There were no injuries, thankfully, other than to our club, but this has been a major challenge to our hard working Schenectady team. Anybody who witnessed the fire damage, or who has followed our unrelenting focus on the speed and quality of the repairs and renovations that have followed, would have no doubt about SPORTIME's 100% commitment to our Schenectady site. Our focus on being the racket sports leader in the Capital Region remains unwavering. We have attached some before and after images of the damage and of the current status of the restoration work at the bottom of this message.

Below, please find an update on recent and ongoing project elements, with estimated completion dates:

• Hard court tennis building: COMPLETE
• Dedicated pickleball court building: COMPLETE
• Newly installed electrical wiring, HVAC units, and plumbing system: COMPLETE
• Clubhouse lower level office spaces, walls, and ceiling installation: COMPLETE
• Clubhouse lower level main entrance and front desk check-in will reopen by the end of January
• The floor tiling on the lower level will commence next week and the lobby traffic patterns may shift to accommodate sections of the flooring installation
• Permanent furniture for the lobby and lounge spaces is on order
• The staircase to access the second floor of the clubhouse will be completed by the end of January
• The second floor mezzanine, lounge, and conference room will be completed by the end of January
• Locker Rooms: Our goal is to have men's and women's locker rooms both completed by early March, but we will do whatever is possible to provide limited access to showers and other completed bathroom essentials as soon as they are functional, even if we are still waiting on the arrival of lockers or other furnishings

We further want to share that while SPORTIME members at our other clubs will be getting a modest membership dues increase as of January 1, 2024, our Schenectady members will not, and will continue to pay reduced, 50% dues. We are not going to raise member dues for our Schenectady members at this time, while you are enduring the dust of our reconstruction project. When the club is complete, with all member amenities fully accessible, dues will be restored to 100%. At some point after that, we will pass along the increase that others are receiving now, only SPORTIME's second dues increase in the last 15 years, the essential revenue from which will allow us to keep our commitments to our employees and members in the face of the most dramatic inflationary period in recent history. Again, we thank you, in advance, for your understanding and continuing loyalty.

We wish you and yours a peaceful and healthy 2024. As always, please feel free to reach out to any member of our team for assistance of any kind. We are here to help!

Sincerely,

Claude Okin  
President and Chief Executive Officer  
SPORTIME Clubs  
cokin@sportimeny.com

Carlos Campo  
Managing Director  
SPORTIME Westchester and Capital Region  
ccampo@sportimeny.com  
(914) 777-5151

Sarah Sharpe  
General Manager  
SPORTIME Schenectady  
ssharpe@sportimeny.com  
(518) 356-0100