Action Line #120102 - Racquetball court suggestion

  • Published
  • By 39th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
INCIRLIK AIR BASE, Turkey --  Question: I work in the budget office (39th Comptroller Squadron). I play racquetball all the time. They used to have four courts for racquetball. Last year, they put machines in one court. After that we only had three courts. Now they are starting renovation for two courts and putting in some machines. We will only have one court left. Why didn't they use the aerobics room? If they use the aerobics room and people want to do aerobics, they can use one court and we can have two racquetball courts available. I think this is a better idea than losing two more courts.

Response: Thank you for taking the time to make this suggestion. We are always looking for ways to enhance our fitness center services and improve the quality of life for all of our customers. Unfortunately, since its peak in the 1980s, racquetball has continued to wane in popularity. Although there is still a core contingent of players like you, customer traffic in our racquetball courts in 2011 constituted only 3.8 percent of our total patron use, and that percentage included individual and organizational usage for workouts and stretching.

Since 2005, functional fitness training programs, such as Crossfit, P90X and Insanity, have ballooned in popularity, especially among military members. Having received multiple requests from units and customers to establish this type of fitness area, we looked at our facility to find the least obtrusive area to provide this service while making the best use of our limited resources. We could not use the group exercise or aerobics area for this new functional fitness area because the majority of the equipment is not portable or easily moved. We opted to use the space that used to be two racquetball courts instead.

We postponed the remodeling of courts one and two to allow time for the glass door to be installed on court three to ensure racquetball players had an area to play during construction. We will continue to closely monitor racquetball court usage to ensure fair and equitable use for all those interested and invite you to reserve the court through our fitness center staff at DSN 676-6086 so you can ensure the court will be available at a time that best suits your schedule.