This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Stories: Yes." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.
Students from the Anderson County School District worked with the Belton Area Museum Association in South Carolina to produce oral history interviews related to the Smithsonian traveling exhibition "Hometown Teams: How Sports Shape America," which toured South Carolina in 2016 and was on view in Belton.
Musical opening (00:00)
Sherri Byrd Snyder (00:18): Belton, as everyone knows, is the tennis capital of South Carolina.
Speaker 2 (00:23): How did a sleepy little town of only 4,000 people become known all over the Southeast as the place to play great tennis? Well, that tradition began over 100 years ago when the young people of Belton became passionate about a new game. "The young men are happy. The stores are closed at six o'clock and the clerks thus have an opportunity of engaging in lawn tennis. Anderson Intelligencer, May 6th, 1892.
Speaker 2 (00:51): By 1890, tennis clubs were being formed in all the municipalities of Anderson county. Lawn tennis is a very popular game in the city. This game is said better than equestrian exercise for developing the muscles of the gentleman and bringing roses to the cheeks of the ladies; and besides, there is a world of interest and amusement in the game. Anderson Intelligencer, April 21st, 1892.
Speaker 2 (01:15): The first court in Belton was located at the Y of the train tracks where the Depot now sits and then was moved to the Plaza where the Belton Tennis Center is located. The courts were not always like they appeared today.
Caroline Grubbs Singleton (01:31): The tennis courts were in bad repair. So everyone got together and they started brainstorming of, "Let's get the courts repaired," and they added the third court. And it just ignited interest and enthusiasm from everyone. And they actually ended up forming a tennis club, which still exists today. Tennis was reborn.
Bob Daniel (01:56): When I first started out, they had a dirt court there in Belton, one court up town where we now have the complex.
Sherri Byrd Snyder (02:06): Belton's first courts were the red clay, and which we still have one in Belton, but the Rubico was also prevalent. And then of course the hard courts.
Speaker 2 (02:16): Unique to Belton is one thing a person has never been charged to play.
Rex Maynard (02:22): Well, the fact we didn't have a country club, I think it made it more available to everybody because the Belton Tennis Center is a public facility. And so anybody, and it's still that way, anybody can, as long as the court's open and we don't have a tournament or a lesson or a clinic or something going on, can go up there and play tennis. And it doesn't cost them a penny. They need to go up at night and turn lights on. And so that has made tennis successful to everybody.
Asset ID: 2022.23.05
Find a complete transcription at www.museumonmainstreet.org
