For the love of tennis

Club director keeps her hand in a lot of racquet endeavors

For years, Laurie Cripe drew on her background in the world of tennis administration to come up with creative ways to get more people on the courts at the Glacier Tennis Club.

These days, her job poses a very different kind of problem.

"People are fighting for the courts," Cripe said. "It's a great thing, but a real challenge."

Cripe, 56, has been supervisor of the facility, based at The Summit health club, for seven of its nine years of existence. She came to the position with an extensive background in running tournaments, organizing leagues and playing competitively herself.

Her experience has proven crucial in handling the current situation, in which about 300 tennis players want time on the club's four indoor courts. Even with the minor headaches this might occasionally produce, getting people out on the court is both a requirement of the job and a joy for Cripe.

"For me to come to work every day and see a 5-year-old and an 80-year-old out there on the tennis court laughing, having fun and getting exercise is great," Cripe said. "Every day we teach someone a sport they can play from age 4 to age 80."

Tennis often is called "the sport for a lifetime," but for Cripe, it's also a sport to which she owes much of the progression of her adult life.

She didn't play as a youth growing up in Whitefish; nor did her husband, Brian, also a Whitefish native. He started playing as a young adult and is still at age 57 an avid and serious competitor.

Her sons Jimmy, 36, and Andrew, 32, did start playing at a young age. They both were state singles champions for Whitefish High School and both went on to have their college education paid for with tennis scholarships to Montana State University.

Laurie picked up her first tennis racquet at age 30.

"My husband and children were playing all the time and I was tired of being left out," Cripe said.

It wasn't long before she was asked to play in a competitive league, and not much longer again before she became involved in the organizational side of the game.

The Cripes founded the Whitefish Tennis Association in 1988. Along with that went the running of a U.S. Tennis Association-sanctioned tournament every summer.

"We love hitting a tennis ball and have always enjoyed being organizers, and I love people," Cripe said of their founding role with the tennis association. "We were there at the right time."

Back then there were no computer programs for tournaments as there are now; it was all done by hand. Despite the fact that it was a tedious job that had them running into scheduling conflicts at every turn - especially when numerous players entered more than one event - Cripe said it was always fun to run a well-organized tournament.

When her youngest son graduated from high school, Cripe went to work full time for Flathead Travel in Whitefish, which detracted from her tennis time. She still was working for Flathead Travel when she started at Glacier Tennis Club.

She stayed at the travel agency for two years before realizing that the tennis facility needed more than just part-time attention. Things weren't necessarily booming, but the groundwork needed to be done to fill the courts.

Cripe, her son Jimmy and fellow teaching professional Cliff Schimpff weathered some lean times. But a solid base developed and in the last three years, Cripe said, the growth has been crazy.

Part of that is in the demand for professional instruction. Jimmy Cripe recently counted about 120 people to whom he gives lessons; Schimpff also is booked solid, Laurie said.

"None of this could have been done without their effort," she said of her son and Schimpff.

While the two pros give lessons, Cripe does about everything else. She takes care of administrative and budget details, creates long-term plans, runs leagues and tournaments, and organizes individual players.

Helping tennis players find their niche in the Glacier Tennis Club culture is a crucial component of her job, and one of the most welcome.

"To be a brand-new person is intimidating. You don't know where you fit in," Cripe said. "I help people get into social doubles, or tell them who the singles players are. The first thing I do when someone new comes in is to figure out how they fit into the mix."

Cripe also is involved in the promotion of the sport on the state and regional level. She is in her second term as president of the Helena-based Montana Tennis Association. She served in 1990-91, and in 2006 signed on as president for a three-year term.

She also is the board liaison for the Intermountain Tennis Association, a region covering six Rocky Mountain states.

Both positions involve a steady slate of meetings - about one a month anywhere but here - but Cripe said her duties also include attendance at the U.S. Open in New York and the new Tennis Channel Open tournament in Las Vegas.

Tennis has been so good to Cripe that she wants to see it enhance the lives of others as well. She has found a large network of friends, a vocation, a shared family passion and even a non-tennis related job through her tennis connections.

A tennis-playing friend in Bozeman was looking for someone in the Flathead Valley to conduct criminal background searches on applicants for work at local outlets of large retail chains. Cripe thought it would be interesting work.

"I go to the courthouse every day and do background checks for potential employees," she said. "It can take from 15 minutes to two hours from my day."

Tennis isn't the only sport she cares about. In the last six years, she has cheered on the Griz at almost every University of Montana home football game. Cripe and a group of women friends are faithful to those Saturdays in the fall, despite her sons' and husband's ties to the Bobcats.

"It's the only other thing I make time for in my life," she said. "The world kind of stops for Grizzly football."

She also doesn't let anything get in the way of time with her grandchildren, who are ages 2 to 4 and who all live in the area.

She already has plans to get the grandchildren into her beloved sport.

A new USTA pre-packaged tennis starter kit, which includes a net and lines that can be set up anywhere, along with balls and racquets, would be a perfect introduction to the game, she believes.

"We'll set one up on our basketball court and play with the grandchildren this summer," she said. "My grandchildren will play tennis."

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4431 or by e-mail at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com.