Allegheny County officially opens blind and low vision tennis courts at Boyce, North, Settlers Cabin and South parks — the first permanent such courts in the nation.
By Ruby Siefkin, Pittsburgh Magazine
On Monday, Allegheny County officials unveiled the first permanent blind and visually impaired tennis courts in the nation — now located in South Park, Boyce Park, North Park and Settlers Cabin.
The courts are actually a project organized and set up by the nonprofit Highland Park Tennis Club, which has been offering free summer clinics for blind and visually impaired players since 2019 on courts with temporary modifications.
Blind and visually impaired tennis, otherwise known as BVI tennis, was created in 1984 by Mioshi Takei, a blind Japanese athlete. The sport is now played in 40 countries internationally, making the U.S. behind the ball in such adaptive sports. The Highland Park Tennis Club — which has been based at the courts on Stanton Avenue in the Highland Park neighborhood — and the United States Blind Tennis Association started this project in Pittsburgh to change that.
“When you have to modify something that everyone else just gets to walk on and use, it just makes you feel a certain way,” says County Executive Sara Innamorato, who tried some tennis shots Monday on the courts in South Park as she wore visually impaired glasses to see what the experience is like.
“We’re saying come as you are,” she says. “We have the courts ready for you.”
The project was largely created by Dana Squelch-Costa, president of the United States Blind Tennis Association, or USBTA.
Costa founded USBTA for her daughter, who was born with a visual impairment. In cooperation with Carlow University professor Jennifer K. Roth, Innamorato and the Highland Park Tennis Association, Costa made her dreams — and her daughter’s — a reality.
Roth, vice president of the United States Blind Tennis Association and a Highland Park Tennis Club community partner, has a background in cognitive neuroscience and is professor of psychology and counseling at Carlow University. She has led and participated in several science experiments regarding the brain’s ability to localize an object’s location based on sound.