Growing the Game in Lancaster

Not many people can say fly fishing is the reason they got into tennis. But Lancaster, N.Y.’s longtime supervisor of tennis instruction George Besch can.

“I had just moved back to western New York at 44 years old, and I didn’t know anything about tennis,” Besch says. “I happened to be talking to a guy who coached the local high school team and worked as a pro at one of the clubs up here. He found out that I taught fly fishing, and he wanted to learn. And he obviously taught tennis, and I wanted to learn. So we bartered.”

The lessons proved to be quite consequential. Just two years removed from his entry into the game, Besch put his name in the hat when the town was looking for someone to lead their recreational tennis operation. Nearly four decades later he’s still running Lancaster’s programming—and building a robust community in the sport in the process.

“When I took the job, the town had one assistant for me and two hoppers of regulation balls,” he says. “Now I've got a staff of 13 and three car loads of different kinds of tennis balls.”

Indeed, Besch’s varied playing opportunities regularly attract more than 200 residents (and non-residents) to the courts each summer. During the day, he oversees camps for a variety of ages and ability levels, welcoming juniors as young as two through the town’s “munchkin” program all the way up to more advanced players who compete on their varsity tennis teams. In the evenings, entire families come out to try the sport and partake in a little formalized instruction. 

Another fun offering for adults is the town’s doubles tournament. Players switch partners every four games in a round robin format, and proceeds benefit a variety of different causes, like hospice and palliative care and local food kitchens. Besch—whose other major passion outside of the sport is social justice advocacy—was inspired in developing the event by the local restaurant Big, Big Table, which employs a “pay what you can” model to help address food insecurity. Likewise, participants in the Lancaster doubles tournament pay what they can afford for the competition's entry fee. 

“It’s really an easygoing tournament,” Besch says. “You get to meet five different players, and it’s for charity. It’s a party!”

These kinds of events are what inspired Besch to take on this role in the first place. He believes wholeheartedly that municipalities have a responsibility to offer fun, affordable recreational opportunities to their residents. (For the first 15 years he ran programming, he insisted that his offerings be free for kids.) He even keeps a trove of demo racquets so that potential participants can come to the court and take the sport out for a spin before fully investing in their own stick. 

Given his own background in the game, he’s always understood how picking up the sport—at any age—can change lives. But after decades of coaching, he’s frequently reminded of just how deep that impact can go. And that’s what has continued to call him out to the tennis courts every day 40 years later.

“After doing this for a little while, people started stopping me in the street or at the coffee shop or somewhere else in town,” he says. “They’ll say, ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but you taught my son or my daughter.’ And their kid may not still be in tennis, but they’ll tell me that they learned so much about having strong values, about being a part of a team, about having ethics, respecting other people and making honest calls. I realized that there’s a lot going on in teaching tennis besides teaching forehands and backhands. And hopefully coaches in other sports are doing this as well! But there’s certainly ample opportunity to teach those kinds of things in tennis.” 

USTA Eastern is proud to support Besch's program through the Growing Tennis Together grant. Contact Parks & Recreation Coordinator Kelsey Altavilla to learn more about how USTA Eastern can support tennis programming in your local park.