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Racquet Fuel provides insights into the best practices and innovations of racquets industry business leaders.
Co-hosts Kim Bastable, Director of Professional Tennis Management at the University of Florida, and Simon Gale, Senior Director Racquet Sports Development at the USTA National Campus, help racquets leaders in your ability to grow the game and to improve the experiences you offer to both your staff and players by talking to industry leaders, including USTA executives, authors and innovators. If you are on a career path in racquet sports or already a racquets business leader and you want to stay up to date on ideas and innovations in racquets industry business and leadership, this podcast is for you.
Presented by the Athlete+ Podcast Network at the University of Florida Institute for Coaching Excellence.
Welcome to Racquet Fuel, where we launch into great conversations and share powerful tools to help you become a stronger Racquet's leader. Your hosts are Kim Bastable, a former all American tennis player and now the director of tennis management at the University of Florida. And Simon Gaitlin, the USTA senior director of Racquet Sports Development. Today, Kim is flying solo to do a short revisit with Alejandra Suarez, one of the owners of North Texas Racquet Club to highlight the challenges and successes the club has experienced in his first few months of operations. Since Racquet Fuel is about building better leaders and with many groups of people nationwide now hoping to start pickleball and Fidel clubs, Kim thought it would be helpful to get an update from Alejandra on what takes to get a club off the ground.
Episode Narration:Here's Kim.
Kim Bastable:Welcome back to Racquet Fuel in a special summer short episode to revisit with the ownership of North Texas Racquet Club. Simon and I interviewed owners Alejandra Suarez and Omar Trevino during season three when they were just opening their new tennis, pickleball, and Padel club. Since this podcast strives to highlight leadership, I thought it would be helpful to share some of the leadership successes and challenges that the club has faced in the first summer. This will serve to show all future entrepreneurs that as well as they might plan, there are always things that you need to learn about and then adapt. So we'll discuss a few topics that Allie has identified as some of the things they've encountered and what she's learned recently.
Kim Bastable:So we welcome you, Allie Suarez. So good to be able to share again about your exciting club. Thanks for joining me today.
Alejandra Suarez:Thank you, Kim. It's such a pleasure to be here back again talking to you after couple of months of operations and ups and downs and good things and things that we've learned along the way.
Kim Bastable:Yes. I thought we'd just run through. We had a good call the other day talking through some of the topics that have been, you know, successes and then maybe challenges. And so I think this is interesting information for people. So I thought we'll just run through some of this list.
Kim Bastable:And the first one that I found was fascinating as I am working on my end to help a a Paddell club get off the ground was your idea of guided open play. So kinda tell us what that is. Everyone knows, you know, open play may or may not know exactly what it's like in the in the Paddell world, but how have you adapted, and what's your format?
Alejandra Suarez:What we've learned from the beginning in paddle was that people were, number one, not knowing what the game was, or they knew exactly what the game was, but they don't have anybody to play with. So we came up with this idea of organizing Thursday's organized open play. That's the that's the title of it. And it's an hour and a half where Omar and I are there, and it's basically up and down the river format that we do. So it's it's been a huge success because it has been players of all levels coming into the game.
Alejandra Suarez:And what we do is they warm up, and then we kinda see, okay, who has some skills, who has less skills here and there, and we try to pair them up into the strongest to the ones that are more new to the sport. And then we play a format, a really quick format of four games. Right? So you each serve one time, and then you get to you you four games. And if it's tied to two, it's a one point besides everything.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? So it's like pressure a little bit of pressure and a little bit of competition there. And the beauty of this is we have we have had all four courts there. So we started putting it at 24 people on the one of the days that I had 24 people on the list, I actually had to cut it because I had 20 already. And I'm like, oh my gosh.
Alejandra Suarez:What am I gonna do here? Because people have to sit out. And the the idea of organized open play is not for them to sit out. So long story short, the first court that finishes, I call time on all the courts. Right?
Alejandra Suarez:And it doesn't matter the score that you are. If you're, like, two one, well, I didn't get to finish. Well, no. Sorry. You're moving up and down the river.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? And it's been fascinating, Kim, to see this young man or grown men play and be so competitive, and I feel like I'm in the classroom again. Right? I feel like I'm I have to teach them something and say, hey. No.
Alejandra Suarez:No. No. That's okay. You need to stop. You know?
Alejandra Suarez:You cannot keep playing. You gotta move on the court. So it's been been really eye opening, and the people are looking forward to it. So at the middle of it, I do create a game in the middle just to make sure that everybody's engaged, and they have fun. They I create, like, a little all in one court game and with different strategy strategies, and then they the last time we played was I divided everybody, and it was like, if you lose a point, you're out.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? So little by little, they abandoned the court, right, until there was only one on the other side. And then we break it, and we go back to the game. It's been a huge success, to be honest.
Kim Bastable:So what what are you charging for that? Just to give a price point. And then what time did you say it is? You're what just because I'm curious when people really know it's hot in Dallas, so that might be some of the details of the time.
Alejandra Suarez:That's that's a great question because we always wanna take care of our members. Right? So what we do is organize open play even though we're there and we're organizing and we're sometimes playing. We don't charge for members. It's free for members, and it's $35 per person, which is our court fee for ninety minutes.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? So that's this it's the same price as if they were to reserve a court per person. But here, you get a game, and you get a little bit of little bit of coaching, little bit little bit of us playing, little bit of everything. It is at night. We put it at from 07:30 to 9PM, which has been very successful because then the heat has been increased.
Alejandra Suarez:And we did an organized fourth of July. I thought about we're very close to FC Dallas. So when FC Dallas scores a game scores in a game, we see a firework. Right? So I'm like, we are gonna see fireworks in the fourth of July.
Alejandra Suarez:So I organized fourth of July open play. Organized open play from seven to nine, and I made a research, and I I saw that FC Dallas was gonna do a fireworks. Right? And did they do this every year. So I'm like, great.
Alejandra Suarez:So we did the 07:30 to nine. And then what I did with the with everybody was in order for us to have a watch party, I said, you know what? Organized open play is, like, done, but you're free to stay in the courts and just keep playing until the fireworks. Wow, Kim. I cannot tell you what a sight that was.
Alejandra Suarez:The people played. People wanna stay and play. Like, that is the the beauty of this game. Right? They don't know each other, but then they're playing and they're doing.
Alejandra Suarez:And then at 09:45 when the show was gonna start, I I told everybody, and we turned the lights off of every of the whole club, and the fireworks were just like like a private one for us. It was it was amazing. People were so happy.
Kim Bastable:That's good research you did. You you've figured that out. That's the joy of being up there in the area where you have a lot of neighbors that are doing some fun things.
Alejandra Suarez:So that's one of the things that we've learned came along the way. I've gotten involved with some networking groups and some people, local people, but they know the insights. Right? So if you don't know what's happening in the area that you're in, you probably miss a lot of things. So that was one of the things that we we learned pretty quickly as a challenge when the grand opening happened happened, and it got postponed postponed because of weather and stuff.
Alejandra Suarez:We'll talk about it in a minute, I I think. But I had secured some food trucks, and then when we moved it to a certain day, boom, all the food trucks were busy because they had an event in Frisco. So I'm like, oh, great. Like, what am I gonna do? Right?
Alejandra Suarez:So research research goes a long way for sure.
Kim Bastable:Research your neighbors. Research what's going on around you. Yeah. That's that's good. Okay.
Kim Bastable:Let's go back to paddle for a minute. And you mentioned that you were able to get a tournament and that that was a way to spread the word. What were the logistics around getting, you know, on a national tournament calendar and then some of the details on that?
Alejandra Suarez:So I'm I wanna start from the beginning. Right? It's because of the team that we create, and we have a very strong leadership team now. We have Carlos and Marianne on our team, and it's been it's been wonderful to have him. And Carlos was the one who actually reached out to Charlie.
Alejandra Suarez:Nico and I had talked about making the ratings because I wanted to align with the USDA and whatever the ratings in The US were gonna be. So Nico and I had talked about it, and we joined with Charlie, we've joined in a conversation, and we made our club part of the red paddle rating. Right? So Carlos was the one that talked to Charlie, And then Charlie, I believe, he he told him to talk to somebody else that's does the draws and everything. But they were very helpful because they put us up in their calendar and, yes, we did a little bit of advertising, but it also helps to partner with somebody like them, right, that they're doing that.
Alejandra Suarez:We got people from Michigan, which was phenomenal coming here. Like, it's it was just and the tournament was a huge success. It was a small tournament with a small prize money, but the people had a lot of fun. It was and people stayed there. People after playing, they stayed there.
Alejandra Suarez:They we have our permit for some drinks, so they had some drinks, and they were just enjoying themselves even though it was hot. But they were there. They it was phenomenal, to be honest. But I do wanna highlight, it is it's not I think the power of this and and the force around this is in the power of the team. Because if we wouldn't have, like, that leadership team, it's like, we cannot do it by ourselves.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. So that's kind of connections in the industry that you're mentioning some people that are you know, Nico Agritelli is the local pro there in Dallas that's on the pro tour and some other people who work with your particular leadership group there for Frisco Community Tennis and North Texas Racquet Club. But in general, what you're saying is that this is just something that, you know, it's tough for two people. You and Omar can't pull it off, and any good club is going to involve getting a solid group of people who are sharing your goals and finding opportunities.
Alejandra Suarez:You're touching a a great point because Omar and I decided to play it. Well, actually, Omar was the one that said, hey. Do you wanna play with me? And I was like, wow. That's awesome.
Alejandra Suarez:So we played it. Right? We didn't know how much turnaround interest we were gonna get. So we're like, yeah. Let's do.
Alejandra Suarez:Let's promote it. Let's play. People we found that people like to play with us, so we wanna do that. Right? But here's the deal, Kim.
Alejandra Suarez:Playing a tournament the first tournament at home, Wow. Simon is right when you're when he said on the first episode, like, it's hard to see the light bulb and this and that. I'm playing on the tournament, and here I am returning a serve. And all of a sudden, I see a little zip tie on the pickleball court far away, but I mean a little one. And then I see the windscreen, the corner of a windscreen open, and I'm like, oh my gosh.
Alejandra Suarez:Like that. Like, what? And as I'm getting back to the I'm like, okay. Get back to the game. I see another person over there taking his shirt off.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? And we're a private club, so it's like, oh, we have a dress code. We cannot have this. Like, and then there's trash over here. And then I'm turning around and telling Omar, like, run.
Alejandra Suarez:He's, like, going all over, like, world. It's just it was fun, but I'm not sure that that's, yeah, that's the right competition there.
Kim Bastable:So you either wanna play or you wanna administrate, but maybe not. Maybe the advice
Alejandra Suarez:is know. As much as I wanna play, I'm not sure that the next one will be the one that I play. I'd rather see how it goes if I administer it. And even though we had somebody helping us run it. Right?
Alejandra Suarez:Like, it's not like we were running it. Like, we had somebody that checked in people, and we hired people. And but yeah.
Kim Bastable:Well, it's hard to turn the administrative brain off. Yes. As we say, Simon. Simon's not here today to have this conversation, but he's he's here in spirit because Yeah. He's he's right.
Kim Bastable:So okay. So let's talk about one of the challenges. As we mentioned, your grand opening was postponed at one time. Dallas may have had I'm not sure you may know the data around it, but one of the wettest maze in its history, just tons and tons of rain and and wind. How did you cope and how did what were the factors that you know, how did that affect you?
Kim Bastable:What how did you respond?
Alejandra Suarez:So it was a tough April and May months, both both months. Right? We had to postpone the the grand opening. And with that, we had to take some decisions that were not completely on our hands. And we're like, what we what do we do?
Alejandra Suarez:Right? Do we postpone it one day? Do we postpone it one weekend, two weekends here and there? So everything is, like, kinda last minute as you're going in and trying to dry the courts and blow the courts because in two hours, the academy is gonna happen. Right?
Alejandra Suarez:So trying to beat the rain and trying to get the kids and the people to come and play. And then there was this big storm. Right? We had a couple of storms, but there was a very, very big one with winds that were very damaging. Right?
Alejandra Suarez:We had some we had one of our fences of our tennis courts, the front fence actually fell. The winds were 80 miles per hour, and they were constant. On the back where our padel courts are, one of the umbrellas of the picnic table completely bent in half and broke, but it stayed there, thankfully. Right? Nothing flew towards the the Padel Courts and stuff.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? Like, we were we're very grateful and and very lucky that nothing happened there. One thing that I do wanna highlight is importance of checking the courts after a big storm or big winds like that because we did notice. Maybe people would not notice, but we noticed that the glasses were a little some of the knobs were a little loose. Right?
Alejandra Suarez:Not as not as as tight as they were before. Right? Because because probably the the movement, right, made it. So what we did was we called right away APF, and we said, hey, guys. We need you to come over here and check our courts again.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? Because we think that it needs to be tightened up. And indeed, they came, and they were like, wow. You were right. Like, they they do need I mean, it was nothing dangerous, but we're not taking our chances.
Alejandra Suarez:We're like, the minimum thing that we see with those courts is it's very important. Right? The importance of research, Kim, is is incredible because, you know, it's glass. Right? So if that glass breaks, it'll break into pieces, but you can never be too careful.
Alejandra Suarez:You have to be keep an eye on them the whole time. And one of the things that I researched and I and I came came about was, you know, when they put decals on the, like, decorations and stuff? Our decals are on the bottom of a court. Right? Because if it breaks, decals on the top can be a danger.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? It's like like they create a guillotine. Let's say you put a big sticker on the top. Well, the glass is gonna break, but that big big piece where the sticker is will not break. It'll come down as a whole piece.
Alejandra Suarez:So that could be very, very dangerous. So that's one of the things that we were very, very careful about because we installed some nets outside because we were coming to we got some big players now that, like, hit the ball outside of the court, and they all go to the parking lot. Park in the parking lot. And it's like, oof. So we put some nets there, and some some people told us, oh, just hang it from the fence here.
Alejandra Suarez:I'm like, no. You cannot touch the paddle court. Paddle court has to be structure the way it is. That's important for everybody to really make our own research. Right?
Alejandra Suarez:That's my only 2¢ in.
Kim Bastable:Yeah. No. That's good. And you've also mentioned that there is some hazard with blowing the sand off of the turf that, you know, trying to dry it. And so you've really basically decided not to do that method
Alejandra Suarez:at all. Don't blow it because every glass there's there's every glass has one tiny spot, and you never know where it is on the glass. But there's one spot that if you touch it, right, it'll break. So blowing the cords, run the risk of, like, having this little pebbles and and sand hit the glass in so many ways that it could make the glass break. So it's better to just leave it alone and then let it dry.
Alejandra Suarez:And our courts, thankfully, they were built with a little bit of slant, and they're drying quickly. Of course, Texas heat helps too. You know?
Kim Bastable:Yeah. Yeah. So what's, another challenge you mentioned? And I think it's a universal challenge to really any business these days and particularly in the Racquet's industry. We've mentioned it, but it's just staffing.
Kim Bastable:And we're not talking about pro staff. We're really just talking mostly about front desk administrative staff. So what have you learned about that and how to fill that role?
Alejandra Suarez:That has been we knew at the beginning opening a new business, we knew there was gonna be rotation. Right? Because people are new to the business, and they may or may not like it. We've been very fortunate that the people that we've had have liked it, but I'm gonna give you a very a a recent example. Right?
Alejandra Suarez:We had a a person working for us, and for personal reasons, that person person had to go. And person didn't wanna go. I'm telling you. Like, they they were with us, like, I don't know, two months or so. And when they gave us a two week notice, I was like, ugh.
Alejandra Suarez:And and they were like, I don't wanna go. And I'm like, yeah. But you do have to go. Right? So it's been great finding people, but it's been a challenge also finding people, especially in the summer.
Alejandra Suarez:People come and go, and they want just a part time job, and then it's been a struggle. And not having that position filled as boring as it can get at at times because in Texas right now, from, I would say, from three to six, Kim, there's nobody. Like, we're all outdoors, and there's nobody there. So that's a downtime there. So it gets
Kim Bastable:But yet you have to have somebody at the front desk.
Alejandra Suarez:Exactly. I have to have somebody because because that helps me be able to do other things. Right? Like, get on the the work thing that I we're in the process of hiring for like, summer's the gonna end, and we have some summer people that are, of course, gonna go back to college and high school, and we're very grateful. Like, these kids, I mean, we've been lucky.
Alejandra Suarez:They're they're gone. They work hard. They they step it up, but they're leaving. Right? So here we go again, trying to hire and putting advertisings on Indeed and, you know, just the local places.
Alejandra Suarez:And I think we're paying a competitive salary, a very fair salary, but still, I yeah. It's a struggle.
Kim Bastable:Sounds to me like it's often more just the it's once you hire, you feel you've solved that, and yet you'll end up having to do it again in two months or three months. I mean, there's just no long term solution. So it's more like just getting in the ritual and routine of having someone, you know, kind of always new and planning for that. It's often against your expectations. You thought you could solve that maybe and find that person that might stick around, but that's often not the case.
Kim Bastable:So a lot of training, and I'm sure you'll probably get better at training. Maybe I'm thinking there could be some interesting tasks you could give the person to do from three to six, something that's, you know but it is hard probably to find ways to fill that time when it's just not that exciting.
Alejandra Suarez:It is. But at the same time, it's also appealing because we normally have, like, college kids or high school kids that they can work on their own. Right? Like, they can they can do a little bit of homework here and there, or they can do whatever. They write a paper
Kim Bastable:or something.
Alejandra Suarez:Yeah. Paid homework time. Nothing wrong with that. Hey. And nothing wrong with that.
Alejandra Suarez:I'm telling you, like but it is exactly as you're saying. It's been we train. We do. We think we're over the hill in this one, and then boom.
Kim Bastable:What's the next challenge and what what are you looking? You said you're having some leadership meetings. So what are you looking to for the next six months? How are you kind of now that you've got at least four months of of real club experience behind you, how does the next four to six months look?
Alejandra Suarez:One of the things that we found is I'm gonna give the July 4 as an example. Right? Unless you live the things and you see what what is successful and what's not, then you don't know what is really gonna attract people. Right? Now we know, Fourth of July.
Alejandra Suarez:I'm sorry. Well, we're not traveling anywhere. We're celebrating it here because it's a blast. Right? So for us right now is handling the calendar.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? It's like putting the things in the calendar. Right? We're gonna have right now, we're gonna have a paddle Olympics. The Olympics are coming.
Alejandra Suarez:So we're gonna have a paddle Olympics. We have Wimbledon, Racquet. Right? Like, it's gonna be a Wimbledon thing. Putting all those things in the calendar that events or one day event, right, that pull people.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? We also talked about our members. Right? We wanna take care of our members because we're both. We're membership and pay as you play for paddle and pickable.
Alejandra Suarez:Right? So we wanna take care of our members, so we're making sure that we make a members only event here and there. Right? Like, so that they get something also out of it. So today's meeting is gonna be about the counter, putting things there, setting up the flyers.
Alejandra Suarez:Like, we already have the fall schedule for the OT Tennis Academy, and we're posting it soon on our website. We gotta create the tournaments that are coming up. We're gonna do a bragging rights tournament or inaugural bragging rights tournament, which is gonna be, we hope, a big success because it'll be probably around October, and it'll give it'll be a year of bragging. Right? The the person that the winners will have a perk every month because they'll have their picture up, and it'll be a bragging rights.
Alejandra Suarez:So one month, you'll get a Gatorade. Every weekend, you come and play. Right? Another day another month, you'll get to you get to invite somebody to play. Right?
Alejandra Suarez:Like so that's that's where we are. One of the important things that we're gonna gonna do in this leadership meetings, Kim, is decide who is doing what because we
Kim Bastable:all have
Alejandra Suarez:these great ideas, and let's do this. And then, like, hey. But who's gonna do it? Right? So pinpoint exactly who's doing what so we can actually be more productive and not step into each other's toes or miss things.
Kim Bastable:That's excellent. Well, that's that's some great tips. I love the growth and the development that you guys are making, and it's good to see the story. I'm excited to follow it along. I thought we'd just jump on this quick episode just to get an update.
Kim Bastable:I think we'll probably get another one in another six months or eight months and see where you are and and how you've learned because I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there that are maybe not building tennis, pickleball, paddell clubs, but I know they're building pickleball facilities or building paddell facilities. So there's just new entrepreneurs that maybe have not done that gone down this path, and I think we can all share and learn together. So any other thoughts that you kinda have that before we leave?
Alejandra Suarez:Well, this is just it's just a happy place. So let's just wait and see because six months from now, Kim, I'm telling you, like, the story is gonna continue and and continue to be a happy story where people really enjoy. Right? Like, we found people that were pickable players that now are padel players, and we found some paddle player padel players that are now like, wait. I might try pickable one day, and I'm like, let's do it, you know.
Alejandra Suarez:So it just it just keeps growing and growing. It's a lot of work. Worthy, it is worth it for sure.
Kim Bastable:Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate your time. It's great to have you, and we look forward to hearing more in the future.
Alejandra Suarez:Thank you so much, Kim.
Episode Narration:That's all for today, but we're not out of fuel. You can find more information and resources in our show notes and by visiting racketfuelpodcast.com. If you like what you just heard, please subscribe. And also, leave a review, which helps other people join the mission to become stronger Racquet's leaders.
Conclusion:This podcast is a production of Athlete Plus, the people, stories, science behind elite athletes and teams. Athlete Plus is the official podcast network of the Institute for Coaching Excellence, a research, education, and outreach center in the College of Health and Human Performance at the University of Florida. The Institute for Coaching Excellence offers various online certificate programs and degrees in partnership with the Department of Sport Management. Learn more today at coaching.hhp.ufl.edu.