By Tara Fischer

Staff Writer

 The Ocean Pines Association’s racquet sports center may move to a singular, blanket price option over the next few years, switching it up from the current setup of multiple membership choices.

At the OPA’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting earlier this month, Ruth Ann Meyer, in charge of the business side of the community’s racquet sports, said that her team conducted a price analysis of local competitors, including Sea Colony, the Ocean City Racquet Center, and the Wallingford Swim and Racquet Club in Pennsylvania, the only other center closest that also offers platform tennis. According to Meyer, the evaluation revealed that Ocean Pines is “severely underpriced in memberships for the racquet center … we’re talking anywhere from $100 to $200 to $600 lower in our memberships than other places.”

Meyer said that the goal is to switch to a one-price membership rate in the next few years. This would be similar to the aquatics set-up, where residents pay one price and have five pools from which they can choose. Director of Racquet Sports Terry Underkoffler agreed and said that a new, combo-only option could address high expenses and operating costs.

“The board should realize that we have been fighting this big discrepancy between tennis and some other sports,” he said. “When we first started out with the yearly membership with platform and pickleball being incredibly low because we had nothing to base it on. As for tennis and the pricing of fixing courts and maintaining buildings, the minimum wage is going up to $15 an hour, and all those factors have played a part in our operating costs.”

 The director continued, arguing that having too many choices to manage is a “budgetary nightmare. “ There are now six sports that can be played at the racquet center, and a multi-sport option would bring in revenue to address necessary modifications.

“I want to phase the option in as one sport and multi-sport because the reality is that there are not three sports at the racquet center,” Underkoffler said. “There’s tennis, platform tennis, pickleball. There is spec tennis, timeless tennis, and pop tennis. These are all games that can be played on the variety of courts we have there. So, the idea of having a one-price membership is something that, for our facility to be maintained at a modern level, for our facility to be fixed in the areas where we need to have our renovations, this is the way we have to go about it.”

Viola maintained that the racquet center is not at one price, and while he and his staff believe in it, there is no timeline for when it will be introduced. Still, the potential adjustment makes sense, the racquet director said.

“We have a lot of people now because of our variety of members in more than one sport. Tennis people are transferring and playing pickleball; pickleball people are transferring and playing platform,” he said. “As people age and want to stay active, timeless tennis and spec tennis allow them to move and play an active sport without covering the whole court. You still have to fix the platform courts, and you still have cracks in pickleball courts, so the costs are still there.”

The possible new membership option comes as Karen Kaplan, the president of the Platform Tennis Club, and Donna Frankowksi, the pickleball club secretary, presented their proposal to the Budget and Finance Committee to add two-sport membership options last September. Currently, racquet sport enthusiasts can purchase a single-sport membership for pickleball, tennis, or platform tennis or an umbrella three-sport fee structure and choose the family or individual package within those options.

The presenters argued at the meeting that the change in fee structure would encourage those interested in paying for two sports, but not three sports, to increase their membership. Per the budget committee’s most recent meeting, that idea is likely not to be introduced into the budget.

“I think that [the two-sport option] goes by the wayside because there are six options now, so the idea of a three-sport one, a two-sport one, a five-sport one, and an all-inclusive one, from a budgeting perspective, a planning perspective, an accountability perspective, would be very challenging,” the Budget and Finance Committee Chair Doug Parks said.

While OPA staff is interested in the idea, if introduced, the potential combo-only membership option is still a few years away.