30 Years On – Jim McCready, a past Executive Director of the APTA in the 1980s, joins the APTA Board

I had often taken the path less traveled early on in my paddle life, helping out here and there, volunteering for the APTA board in 1981, and holding the office of Executive Director. But, I hadn’t walked that way in decades. It held fond memories and I had a yearning to visit it again. So, I took that road again one day and, boy, how things have changed in 30 years!

The new-breed of board members are as passionate as ever but have so many more tools at their fingertips. In 1984, the membership records were on index cards. There wasn’t a laptop to be found, just an electric typewriter and a word processor, without spell check. The office staff of one could barely type. The newsletter was black and white and we had to cut and paste the entire issue and send it by hand over to the printer, who was a real person.

Ahh, but those were the days. No cell phones. No dot corns. No Facebook. What the heck did we do all day but get lost using an actual hand-held map on the way to a tournament. Region VI just came into existence. Almost everyone lived within a two-hour drive of the board meeting, which may have lasted less than a working dinner, with a few notes passed around at cocktail hour.

Now, in 2014, it all started with a Thursday night reception, to reconnect, meet new directors, and play paddle……….[click sidebar image to read more]

Source: Platform Tennis Magazine, Vol. 16 Issue 1 Sept./Oct. 2014