|
In the spring of 2006, Ned Fasullo once again picked up the one item thought lost from his childhood - a tennis racquet. From the age of 8 to 19 he was an avid tennis player having grown up at Tara Club in Tara Subdivision. He dropped the sport from the age of 20 till the age of 34 when he and his wife Kelly began playing for fun and exercise. Quickly realizing he had regained his passion for the sport, he began playing with a few friends from Catholic High. One of these friends, Founder Brian Connolly, suggested that a group of 8 of us start playing on a regular basis. This moment, which began on July 3rd, 2006 is really the first "official" match of the Court Jesters, and took place at BREC's Independence Park hard courts.
Once things started percolating in his head, Ned began to devise a system of rules with fellow founder Hugo Andricain and a scoring system that could track what was happening with the newly formed private league. But soon the word of fun and excitement and something new had permiated the very fabric of the Baton Rouge tennis community and in the fall of 2006, several new members (46 to be exact) had joined the Court Jesters, which was now off and running.
Slowly but surely things began falling into place, like the League's web site, Ned's creation of TenniSoft 2.0, the League's interactive, online scoring system and the expansion of the League in Spring 2007 to include Lady Jesters. At first we wanted to name them "Jestrogen", but it was deemed "not a smart move" by our wives and female friends. Hence, the name Lady Jesters prevailed. What also prevailed was the news that the Court Jesters had become the largest men's and women's singles league in the city, if not the entire state in just short of a year. Now everyone who was a singles player was clamoring to get in and so we opened the doors to expansion in to other cities in the state.
Ned's ultimate goal is to open Court Jesters chapters across the US, promoting the spirit of singles tennis play and providing a fun way to compete in singles tennis.
|
