Some History Some History
Some History
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How It All Began

The tennis club was started in 1978 by the original owner of the Resort, Myrtle Evertt. Myrtle and I worked at the same school. She was a Counsellor and I was a Vice Principal. She finally convinced me to come try out her indoor tennis court at the Resort and probably did not realize that I would continue playing there for the next twenty eight years !

The first five memberships were issued to 1) Lloyd Wilson 2) Shirley Wilson 3) Ron Shalley 4) Charlotte Shalley 5) Gil George.

The second court, change rooms, tennis lounge, and swimming pool were added three years after the first court was completed.

The Annual Leagues

In order to have members meet and play tennis with as many other members as possible, we felt that leagues had to be organized. The leagues also gave members a commitment to play each week during a league. Myrtle obtained most of the perpetual trophies for the annual leagues by convincing companies that did work at the Resort or sold products to the Resort, to donate a trophy to the tennis club.

The annual leagues worked very well since in most years, over 95 percent of the members participated in the leagues. There was usually at least one league going over nine months of the tennis year. We never organized annual leagues during the summer months.

Team Competitions

Yes, we even organized team competitions during the Summer months like Billie Jean King. We would select Captains and have our big draft meeting where the Captains could draft their players. The draft meetings were also a lot of fun. It worked best when each team had enough players for a team of Ladies Doubles, Men's Doubles, Mixed Doubles, and one player for Ladies Singles and Men's Singles.


The Open Tournaments

We then started organizing open tournaments to give our members an opportunity to compete with players from other tennis clubs. The open tournaments were always round robin, were a good fund raiser, and a lot of fun. The ladies in the club became quite famous for the pies we sold in the concession at the tournaments. I think some players always played in our tournaments because of our pies !


Tennis BC Leagues

Both our ladies and men competed in Tennis BC Spring Leagues. However, we did exceptionally well, for the size of our club, in their Summer Mixed Doubles Beach League. We won the Jack Volrich Trophy for Division 1 for three consecutive years from 1990 - 1992.


The Wilson Cup

The Fraser Valley Tennis Club started the Wilson Cup Tournament, in honour of Lloyd Wilson, as an Open Men's Doubles Tournament.

After the tournament was discontinued for a number of years, I obtained permission to restart the tournament at Heritage Valley, as a Senior Men's Doubles Tournament.


The Day The Mud Came Down

The indoor courts are located near a fairly steep slope. Due to excessive rain and runoff the far end of the slope beside court #2 gave way and pushed a portion of the wall five feet into the court. The mud and water of course flooded the indoor courts. This occured during the week. The Resort had a bulldozer remove the mud beside the court during the rest of that week. On the weekend, Ken Peters, Henry Hooge, Vic Ratzlaff, Don Mill, and myself were able to get the wall back onto the foundation with the help of a rented house jack. We then power washed both courts and had the courts ready for the following week. That was some teamwork !


Our First Closure

In 1994, the Evertt Family signed a three year lease to purchase agreement. In the first two years, we managed to rent the indoor courts. However, in the third year, due to an excessive rental increase, the members decided to discontinue operation of the tennis club in August, 1996.

However, in December, 1996, the full purchase price could not be paid and the Evertt Family took over management of the Resort again. By August, 1997, I managed to sign another rental agreement with the Resort and we were back in operation.

Ron Shalley






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