Giving Used Tennis Balls a New Look on Life

Did you know that it takes 400 years for a tennis ball to break down naturally? According to the nonprofit Recycle Balls, tennis players in the United States alone trash 125 million balls into landfills every year. That is enough to stack 625,000 recycling bins of 200 balls each, 60 miles high!

And with those staggering numbers in mind, it’s important to find ways to recycle used tennis balls once they lose their bounce.

That’s why when it came time for Michelle Strain and her Miller Park Women’s 18 & Over 3.5 teammates to head to the USTA Nationals Championship Tournament in Surprise, Arizona, she decided to repurpose old tennis balls and cans and give them a new life.

“I hadn’t been to nationals before but many of my teammates had and they suggested we come with a gift idea,” Strain said. “I’m a resourceful person and I’m always trying to find ways to preserve the planet, so I decided old tennis balls could still be useful and thought making net measuring chains packaged in tennis ball characters could be a fun and functional idea. It’s a tool that everyone needs but never has and uses a makeshift solution to fill that need.”

Once the idea was formed, the Miller Park team gathered at their captain Ana Klein’s house as a pre-tournament team building party, equipped with glue guns and googly eyes to decorate the balls, each player putting their own spin on their balls. (Pun intended!)

The team went off to compete at nationals with 50 gifts in total to hand out to their opponents and fellow tennis players along the way.

Each player on the team presented the gift on the court before match play began and each time the gift was received with a giggle, a smile, or gratitude from their opponents.

“It turned out to be a nice icebreaker before each match and eased the moment before the competition kicked in,” Strain added. “Coming off a tough year after the pandemic, it was fun to do something lighthearted and put a smile on someone’s face. That was objective.”

In addition to giving the gifts out to their opponents, the team also gave some of the tennis balls to the USTA staff and officials, with one sitting on the officials’ table throughout the tournament, all in the effort to bring out the sportsmanship of the event.

After an undefeated season, the 13-person team knew going into the tournament that the competition would be tough, but one of the team’s ultimate goals was getting to nationals as a team and celebrating the camaraderie of the sport. 

“I think the gifts were a fun aspect that helped bring us all together,” Klein added.

And though the team ended up finishing in sixth place, the first-time gift idea was ultimately a hit.

“I would certainly make more in the future if people wanted more,” Strain said. “It was a full-circle moment to repurpose the tennis balls and create a new function for them. And on top of that, it was a lot of fun and created meaningful connections not just for my team, but everyone we gave a gift to.”

Ultimately, not only did Strain and her team’s gift inspire a fun and functional way to contribute to the tournaments, but it also shows there many ways to come up with creative solutions to reduce the amount of trash tennis contributes to the planet.  

“I’m very conscious before I open a new can, and I think we as a community need to look at that and recognize how many balls we throw in the landfill,” Strain said. “We should all take part in that effort, and I think we should all think about how we can repurpose used balls.”