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By Rex Barber
Johnson City Press
MILLIGAN COLLEGE — A project to enhance Milligan College’s tennis complex will also enhance an entrance to the campus.
Workers with Burleson Construction Co. began building a 4,000-square-foot clubhouse for the W. T. Mathes Tennis Complex in April. The clubhouse will have space for bathrooms with showers, offices, changing areas and storage for equipment.
The Mathes complex has six courts arranged in steps. Milligan President Don Jeanes said the two-story clubhouse will have an open air pavilion that will be perfect for observation of matches or practices.
“We wanted the pavilion up here because some of our courts are kind of stair-stepped, coaches and others can stand up here and see all six courts, or at least most of the courts where before they would just have to go from one court to the other to see how their players were doing,” Jeanes said.
The roughly $750,000 project should be completed by the middle of October, said Chad Brown, project manager for Burleson. He said work left to be done includes laying brick, installing tile in the showers, running communication lines to provide video recording capabilities, placing traction mats on the pavilion floor and railing around the second level. An elevator will also be installed to provide access to the pavilion.
The final touch will involve landscaping.
“So this will complete our tennis facility,” Jeanes said. “Included with it is another entrance to the campus and some additional parking will be added, and so it’ll kind of finish up this corner of the campus.”
Milligan has men’s and wom- en’s NAIA collegiate tennis teams. Coach Ryan Reynolds is new this year and graduated from Milligan.
But students and faculty will use the facility for recreational purposes. Jeanes said the facility was a popular project.
“They (tennis players) had to go back over to the dorm or the Lacy Fieldhouse if they needed to change, so this’ll make this much more convenient and certainly allow them to keep their equipment here on site rather than other places on campus,” Jeanes said.
The Steve Lacy Fieldhouse contains regulation basketball and volleyball courts, a 25-meter swimming pool, classrooms, a weight room and other facilities.
“When we built the new tennis courts four or five years ago, this facility was in the master plan but we didn’t have the financial resources to construct it,” Jeanes said of the new clubhouse. “So we’re putting together resources and we’ve constructed this.”