Helping tennis grow in the Kansas City area: ‘We want to make tennis look like America’

Manon Eilts grew up in Norfolk, Nebraska, with only one tennis court in town and likely no local pro for 300 miles, but she still liked to play when she could.

Now, Eilts’ job is marketing tennis in a way that helps make it more accessible for people of any race, gender, age, ability or location.

In January, Eilts will mark 20 years as director of marketing, communications and membership for the United States Tennis Association’s Missouri Valley Section. Headquartered in Prairie Village, Kansas, the section serves Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Oklahoma, promoting the development and growth of tennis throughout.

Its reach includes around 4,000 members and 70 member organizations in the Kansas City metro, including parks and recreation departments, health and wellness organizations, community tennis associations and private clubs.

Eilts and her small communications team use USTA.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and a three-times-a-year digital publication to promote play opportunities throughout the five-state region. During May, which the USTA recognizes as National Tennis Month, they plugged over 100 events hosted by USTA-partnering organizers, hoping to increase awareness and opportunities for all.

“We want to really make tennis look like America,” Eilts said, “and we think we’re doing a better job every year as we learn how we can just be more accessible to everyone and bring it to the local community. So essentially, we’re just trying to bring tennis to where people are.”

Events Eilts helped promote in May included the annual North American Indian Tennis Association tournament in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an adaptive wheelchair tennis clinic in St. Louis and a city-wide scavenger hunt at tennis courts in Lincoln, Nebraska.

These are just a few examples of tennis’ growing and diversifying reach. According to USTA research, national tennis participation grew for the third straight year in 2022, with 23.6 million people playing, up 5.9 million (33%) since 2020. More people are playing tennis than pickleball (8.9 million), badminton (6.5), racquetball (3.5) and squash (1.2), according to the USTA’s research.

Eilts ascribed tennis’ position as the top racket sport to known health benefits. The USTA says tennis players live an additional 9.7 years on average compared to sedentary individuals, beating out soccer (4.7 years), cycling (3.7), swimming (3.4) and jogging (3.2). Racket sports are said to reduce all-cause mortality by 47% and cardiovascular-related death by 56%.

In the past three years, tennis participation has also increased among diverse groups. Latino/Hispanic participation is up 90%, Black/African participation is up 46% and Asian/Pacific Islander participation is up 37%, according to the USTA.

“We know that we can continue to do better,” Eilts said, “but those are really encouraging numbers that some of our efforts are paying off and getting people on the courts to live out healthy lifestyles and have fun.”

COVID-19 likely helped tennis’ growth, Eilts said, as it was one of the safer, distanced sporting options during the pandemic. During that time, Eilts and her team specifically succeeded in advancing the sport in the Kansas City area.

For the 100th anniversary of the USTA Missouri Valley Section in 2020, Eilts wrote a grant proposal that with reception and matching of funds became $100,000 for tennis equipment in the Kansas City metro.

“The grant went for things like buying tennis rackets, buying little pop up mini nets,” Eilts said “It might be underwriting a community event of some sort, maybe even just refreshments, or helping underwrite the cost of a tennis pro to help with an event, or a clinic or a workshop.

“So (allocations) were varied, it was an application process, and we were not very restrictive because we wanted to see the creativity the local community had for just bringing tennis to diverse populations and really just getting people out there to play the game.”

As for development in the area since then, Eilts noted the Missouri Valley Section recently sold 34 popup nets to the Kansas City, Kan. School District and is helping physical education teachers bring tennis to gyms and playgrounds.

The Missouri Valley Section is also working with Stonewall Sports Kansas City to promote its four-week “pride league” that began in June and ends in mid July at the Plaza Tennis Center.

With July being national Parks and Recreation Month, Eilts and her communications team will be hard at work again. USTA league programs have been going on all summer, as well, with sectional and national championships to come.

Eilts expects tennis will only continue to thrive in the Missouri Valley.

“We’re definitely on an upward roll, so I definitely see tennis continuing to increase,” Eilts said. “We need to continue to work with infrastructure to build additional tennis courts and renovate and repair the ones that we have so that when we have a lot of tennis programming, we have places to actually conduct them. So we’ll have a lot of focus on supporting our organizers out there who are delivering the game of tennis.

“So I think we’ll definitely continue to see growth as even more of the benefits of the game — the health benefits that I’ve mentioned — people are becoming more aware of them. I think they’ll understand that tennis is definitely a great racquet sport to play and we’re going to continue to get research and share that out and get people out there on the court.”