The Courts We Built: The Battle for a Tennis Cathedral

By Douglas McCarty

In 1977, thirty-six people in Eugene, Oregon opened their checkbooks and built a tennis center on a handshake with the YMCA. No contract. No lawyers. Just a promise: we build it, you run it as a tennis center. For everybody.

For forty-five years, both sides kept that promise.

Then the YMCA stopped.

This is the story of what happens when an institution breaks faith with the community that built it - and what that community does next. Drawing on Orwell, Cervantes, Buber, and William James, Douglas McCarty makes the case for saving a place that matters, and offers a vision for what it could become.

Part history of the place, part love letter to tennis - and a battle plan for anyone who has ever watched a bureaucracy consume something irreplaceable.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0983749531
• ISBN13: 9780983749530
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Cathedral Foundation Press
• Length: 114 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"