Dear Members, we will be closed on 12/24 and 12/25 to celebrate the holidays. However, we WILL BE OPEN on 12/31 and New Years Day if you would like to book a court. It will feel great to run around after all of the eating and celebrating. Please email us at hvitennis@gmail.com and we will line up a time for you.

Members, please note that Hudson Valley Indoor Tennis is closing on Wednesday 11/26/14 at 12:30pm due to the expected heavy snowfall. We will also be closed on Thanksgiving Day. We will re-open on Friday 11/28/14 at 8am. We hope you all stay dry and warm and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

We would like to remind every one of you to not speed into the tennis club property. We are getting negative feedback from our very nice neighbors. Please give yourself a little extra time in getting to your tennis match. It is better to arrive early and relax a little before playing. Thank you.

Hello to all of our tennis lovers! We want to officially welcome you back to Hudson Valley Indoor Tennis for the upcoming 2014-2015 winter season.

We open Sunday, October 5th. We will be open every day with the exceptions of Thanksgiving and Christmas until Saturday, May 2nd. There will be no contract play on New Years Day, but we will be open for business on that day for those who want to get some exercise in the new year.

We will be collecting everyone’s membership fees on their first
play of the year. The membership fee (as well as all other fees) remains the same as last year: $50. Everyone who plays at the club who is over 18 years of age must pay a membership fee; this includes players taking lessons and players in the World Team Tennis League.

Members who are part of a contract group(s) will be given their
invoice (including their membership fee) on their first play of the year. Please bring your checkbooks!

Currently our World Team Tennis “B” league is a little short of
players. This very entertaining Friday group (5:30pm-7:30pm) is
set up for men and women who fall into a USTA ranking of roughly 2.5-3.5. If you are interested in joining this league, please contact Donna Viertel at donna@ulstercountypress.com.

If you are looking for lessons, there are two very good pros who teach at Hudson Valley Indoor Tennis. You can contract them directly if you have any questions or would like to set up a lesson: Shawn Holzmann can be reached at shawnh26@gmail.com. Karen Gill can be reached at karengill8@aol.com.

Finally, a few notes regarding the club rules:

—Please, please, please either carry clean tennis shoes into the club and put them on here, or – if you wear your tennis shoes into the club – please wipe them thoroughly on the indoor and outdoor mats that are provided. This is particularly true of our young future tennis stars who often run onto the courts with dirty shoes. We are going to be quite a bit tougher enforcing this policy. We would hate for people
– and particularly children – to go home unhappy due to not being allowed on the court.

—No food or beverages are allowed on the courts except for water.

—We would also like to remind you to respect our neighbor at the end of Old Neighborhood Road. Please drive slowly and careful when entering and exiting the facility.

We wish everyone a fantastic indoor tennis season! See you soon.

James and Matt

Hudson Valley Indoor Tennis is now taking reservations for contract time for the coming season. Most of our great members have already reconfirmed their slots for the 2014-2015 winter tennis season. For those of you who have not, please shoot us an email and let us know you would like to hold onto your time slot.

We still have some excellent time slots available for those who have been looking to play every week through the months of inclement weather. For example, 8am-10am is available on Monday mornings. There is at least one court available most of the day on Wednesdays until 4pm. You could customize your slot! There is also time available on Tuesdays evenings starting at 7:30pm and on Wednesday and Thursday evenings starting at 8pm. Finally, there is contract time available on Sunday afternoons – a great time to get out and get some exercise!

Hope all of our great members are enjoying the summer and playing lots of tennis!

James and Matt

Sure, Tuesday July 15th is going to be a rainy nasty day, but look at the bright side, HVIT will be Open! Give us a call or email if you would like to book a time. Matt can be reached by phone or text at 845-399-1868 or you can email us at matt@canzonetti.com.

Our new email address is HVITennis@gmail.com  The old addresses will still work but all mail should eventually go to this address. There is also good news for all of you who have been frustrated with our answering machine in the past year…it’s fixed! Now remember, until we re-open for the season on October 5, 2014, we will be picking up our messages sporadically. But if there’s a steady rain outside there’s a pretty good chance there is someone at the club. The easiest way to reach us is always by email.

Dear Tennis Lovers, the club will be open this coming Thursday (6/5/14) due to the very rainy forecast. We will be opening at 8:00am but best to book ahead of time. You can reach us at matt@hvitennis.com to book a court. The cost is $35 per hour. All membership rules are in effect. However, all existing members do not need to renew until October 4, 2014. Guests will have to pay standard guest fees ($5 if they are playing with a member or $10 if they are not) plus the court time.

We are wrapping up our inaugural season on May 4, 2014, and have had a great time in year one. We saw a lot of old friends as well as met hundreds of new tennis lovers. Thank you for making Hudson Valley Indoor Tennis a success. We truly believed if we built a high quality indoor facility that tennis players would come from far and wide and – holy smokes – it worked!

We would just like to mention a few items regarding the club moving forward:

WE ARE CLOSING FOR THE SUMMER BUT…

We will close for the summer on May 5, 2014. Our last contract plays are on Sunday, May 4th. We will re-open on a daily basis on Sunday, October 5, 2014.

However, we will be sending out periodic emails in the summer months indicating we are opening the club due to rainy weather. It is also possible we will be open on days when there is excessive heat. In other words, when you cannot play tennis outdoors, we may very well be open! This will be particularly true on rainy weekends. We will post open dates on our website, HVITennis.com. There have also been some inquiries regarding whether we would be open at nightime. That is not our current plan but if this is something that interests the membership we would definitely consider it.

If you receive our “rainy day” email or see it posted online, you are welcome to email matt@hvitennis.com to schedule a play. You may also call 845-399-1868 to book a court. Particularly on rainy weekends, when there could be heavy demand, we suggest you email us early to ensure you get a court. It will be completely first come, first served. We should mention that we will not open the club for every rain shower that comes through the area. The openings will be for significant periods of rain where outdoor courts will clearly be unplayable.

Our summer rates will be $35 per hour for members. Your current memberships are good until October 5, 2014, when the 2014/2015 season begins. Guest fees will apply the same way they did for the winter season: guests playing without members will pay $10 per person per play; guests playing with a member pay $5 per person per play.

Shawn Holzmann will continue to teach his clinics and private lessons at HVIT throughout the summer months. Shawn can be reached by email at shawnh26@gmail.com. His schedule can be found on his website at www.shawnholzmanntennis.com.

SOME ISSUES YOU SHOULD BE AWARE OF….

We have been having some issues with people speeding into the club. An elderly gentleman who lives at the end of Old Neighborhood Road (just before you get to our gravel driveway) was extremely helpful and patient with us during our construction. We would like our members and guests to respect his right to safety and quiet. In addition, our gravel drive took quite a beating during the winter. It is wise to take it very easy as you enter and exit the club property.

Water cups will not be available going forward. We will continue to provide water in our free, refrigerated unit. We encourage people to bring water bottles or their own cups. The plastic cups were being used in the thousands and left all over the facility, often with water still in them. We believe this will provide a nicer environment and much less plastic waste.

We have collected an extensive amount of personal items. These include: water bottles, jackets, pants, hats, gloves, etc. If you think you may have misplaced something, come and have a look through our lost and found. On April 25th it is all going to Goodwill.

FINALLY, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY…

As many of you already know, we have tried to build a very nice tennis facility. We are particularly proud of our 11-layer Decoturf courts. The court surface is very soft. Dirt, mud and stones are easily ground directly into the court surface.  However, this is what makes them so much easier on our feet, ankles, knees, and hips. We do not want our facility to have worn out courts, so we have decided to resurface the top layers of both courts this coming August or September. This is expensive to do and we were not originally planning to do it until the end of our fifth year. However, we feel it is imperative that we do it this year in order to distinguish HVIT from other tennis facilities in the Hudson Valley. Obviously, we cannot afford to do this every year.

Under the circumstances, we ask that each and every one of respect our shoe policy: wear your regular shoes into the club and then put on your clean tennis shoes once you are inside. This will help tremendously with the wear and tear on the courts. We ask in particular that parents of young tennis lovers (we have dozens of kids who take lessons with Shawn) be aware of this policy. Those who wear tennis shoes into the facility (rather than changing into them once they get to HVIT) will not be allowed unto the courts until they can show they have clean footwear. We realize this can cause some issues and lost plays but we have no choice but to ask for full compliance. In addition, we have lately been finding food and beverages (other than water) in the court building. Only water is allowed into the court building.

We have also noticed on several occasions that players have slammed their racquets into both the net (causing permanent damage to the top net cord) and into the soft court surface itself. Such actions negatively impact the facility and detract from the playing experience of other members. This behavior will not be tolerated going forward.

We are very excited at the response of you – our members – to Hudson Valley Indoor Tennis. We are looking forward to seeing you all again the first week of October, 2014 and we expect that many of you might show up before that on a rainy day this summer!

Be well,

James and Matt

Our oldest tennis lover, 96-year old Mrs. Schoen still showing excellent form last month at Hudson Valley Indoor Tennis. Tennis is indeed a lifetime sport!