Vote Rome for Best Tennis Town

The City of Rome (Ga.) is a Top-10 finalist in the United States Tennis Association’s Best Tennis Town contest! This is more than an honor; it puts the city in line to possibly receive up to $100,000 in cash to improve its tennis offerings and facilities.

Tennis has become an economic engine for Darlington’s surrounding community in Rome and Floyd County. The city hosts a number of tennis tournaments each year, often utilizing the facilities at Darlington School for matches. Just this spring and summer, Rome hosted adult state league championships and two junior tournaments that brought an estimated 3,000 people to our area.

At Darlington, we offer tennis at the middle school, junior varsity and varsity levels, and our year-round Tennis Academy program is consistently growing as it attracts students from around the world. Just this month, we hosted the first-ever Coosa International Tennis Academy Tournament and four sessions of High-Performance Tennis Camp, all of which were very well attended. Tying Darlington even more closely to this effort is the fact that alumnus and native Roman Gordon Smith (’71) currently serves as the executive director of USTA.

To further support the sport, the Rome community is lobbying for the development of a new 74-court tennis facility that would be the largest of its kind in the world. This complex would be a huge asset not only to Rome and Darlington, but to the entire State of Georgia, and the prize money available through the Best Tennis Town contest would most certainly make this project more tangible.

Please help our town achieve this great honor by visiting www.besttennistown.com and casting your vote today. We are competing with cities a lot larger than we are, including Atlanta, so we need your help! Voting closes July 26 at 11:59 a.m. It only takes a few seconds, and the payoff could be immeasurable.