Board Play for the Bored
Sportwall Uses Technology to Battle Technology As
Backboards Adapt to the Times
Tennis Week, November 30, 2004 - Long
before the creation of any of these ball machines that
can be programmed to act as skilled hitting partners,
tennis players had surrogate practice buddies in the
form of the old-fashioned backboard, usually a 12-foot
high, 12-inch thick slab of concrete or cinder blocks.
Technology has changed the backboard; they are now made
of composite materials that withstand weather better
than their brick-and-mortar predecessors. But at root,
they are still primitive hitting partners.
Technology has changed backboards in another
way, too. Computers, whether PCs with their high-speed
internet connections or PlayStations Xboxes or GameCubes,
have rendered many of them obsolete. The days of a child
pretending to play his favorite tennis star, as in the
award-winning Boy vs. Wall ad produced by the USTA several
years ago, have been replaced by children playing their
favorite tennis stars via sophisticated video games.
That is a trend that Cathi Lamberti, CEO
of Carpinteria, Calif.-based Sportwall International,
hopes to stem with her Sportwall backboards, which have
been featured at the U.S. Open's Smash Zone for the
last three years.
Sportwall backboards, made of either ABS
thermoplastic or a fiberglass-reinforced gypsum, depending
on the model, have a range of uses, from rehabilitative
and therapeutic to educational to purely recreational.
Balls come off the wall quicker than old-fashioned backboards,
quickening relfexes in those who practice regularly.
Sportwall backboards, which range in price from $1,500
to $12,000, are among the fastest growing products in
what the industry calls "active interactive training"
and can be used as training aids for a variety of sports.
But Lamberti has pledged to limit the
rollout to tennis only through the end of next year.
The company has partnerships with the USTA, USPTA, Intercollegiate
Tennis Association and World Team Tennis. Former ATP
Executive Vice President J. Wayne Richmond, is a marketing
consultant for the company.
While more than 100 schools nationwide
have Sportwall backboards and scores more fitness clubs,
Lamberti, who was a teacher in her native South Africa,
is most passionate about using the backboards to fight
childhood obesity, which she considers to be a product
- at least in part - of computer use.
"We have a trend toward technology
and sedentary lifestyles," Lamberti says. "If
we don't use technology to bring kids back to sports,
we're going to lose them."
And this is where Lamberti applies a bit
of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" logic.
She created the Sports-PC for Tennis line of backboards,
which almost literally have bells and whistles that
help keep kids interested. There are targets on the
wall that light up when hit, producing video game-like
sounds, and the number of times someone hits the wall
in the live target areas registers at the top of the
backboard as that person's score. The piece de resistance
is the "Off the Wall Skills Challenge," which
allows people worldwide to compare their scores, creating,
essentially, a man against man competition via machine.
"This is our Punt, Pass and Kick,"
says Sportwall President John Urmston, referring to
the popular NFL competition that tests kids' skills
in those disciplines.
Lamberti talks dreamily about having someone
such as Andre Agassi hit against the backboard to launch
an international competition to see who can post the
best score. At the recent USPTA World Conference in
LaQuinta, Calif., former Top 5 pro Brian Gottfried demonstrated
the "Off the Wall Skills Challenge." Who actually
wins doesn't really matter. "The result is either
a skill or they get fit," Lamberti says. "The
kids don't think about sweating (when they're hitting
against the backboard); they're just having fun."
For more information about Sportwall and
the "Off the Wall Skills Challenge," go to
www.sportwall.com.
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