Wheelchair doesn’t slow local tennis teacher

Thursday, February 18, 2010

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For most people, a wheelchair-confining car accident would be the end of their days of playing tennis. For Hudson resident Dick Lane, though, it was just the beginning.

Lane, 44, came to Hudson in 1989, having grown up in Lowell, Mass. He settled in town with his wife Beth and his son Jonathan, now a student at Alvirne High School. Working for an HVAC company in Framingham, he’d never played tennis in his life.

“Before my accident, I thought it was a dumb game,” said Lane, with a touch of irony. But in 1994, Lane was driving his company’s van and a rear tire blew out, causing the van to roll over four times.

“I didn’t hit anything on the road or anything like that, it was just my time to go” said Lane. It was in the rehabilitation hospital that Lane said he had a life-changing realization. “I was lying in the bed, and my wife had just left the room. The physical therapist crossed paths with her in the hall and asked my wife what kind of mood was I in, was it ‘safe’ to come in. Right then I came to the decision of what kind of an attitude I wanted to have, and when she came in, I was wearing a big smile.”

Lane didn’t start right into tennis, but started playing the better-known wheelchair basketball. One of the men who played began pushing Lane to try wheelchair tennis. He was reluctant at first.

“I couldn’t wrap my head around playing tennis in a chair,” said Lane. “But to ‘shut him up’, I told him I’d go to this tennis camp he was participating in, and I got hooked. It’s very addictive.”

From there, Lane wound up taking over the group after his friend got hurt, and began learning how to teach the sport, as well as play it. He now teaches and plays at the YMCA’s in Merrimack, Nashua, and Goffstown, though he considers Merrimack his home court. Lane works with people from as young as 13 all the way up to a 65-year-old man who is partially paralyzed.

“We have a couple of demonstrations planned for this summer,” said Lane. “We go down to Rhode Island to the Hall of Fame in Newport and do a demonstration, and we do a tennis camp for disabled children We also do demonstration at the Boston Lobsters.”

Lane explained that there are tournaments, and skill classifications, just like with “able-bodied” tennis players, and they play singles, doubles, and “One Up/One Down” matches (one wheelchair participant and one “able-bodied” person).

“I have a few trophies,” said Lane, humbly. “My first tournament, I started in D, and they told me halfway through that I underestimated myself. I won that tournament, so in doubles, they moved me and my partner up to the C Division. They matched us up with the tournament champion and we lost.”

About to move up to the “A” level, Lane plays in several local tournaments and one national tournament each year. The national tournament he plays in is at Flushing Meadows in New York, famous home of the U.S. Open. He’s been playing in that tournament for 11 years.

Lane’s humility is one of the things that draws people to him. One of his hitting partners, Dr. Michelle Scribner-MacLean, describes him as a “regular Joe” and tells the story of how Lane won the USPTA Coach of the Year award in 2008, and didn’t mention it to her for two months.

The wheelchairs used in the game are different from standard wheelchairs, with “cambered” (angled) wheels that help with turning and stability. Competitors use standard tennis rackets, but Lane noted that the grips wear out at an incredibly fast rate, because players wheel themselves around while also holding on to the racket. For this reason, Lane prefers the old-style leather grip, which he says can last him about three months.

Wheelchair players are allowed two bounces instead of one, which is about the only rule change. And when they play in “One Up/One Down” matches, Lane says it can get crazy because the wheelchair player gets two bounces and the “able-bodied” person only gets one.

Being on wheels brings one other variable to the game. Lane explained that outdoor courts are slightly pitched to allow for drainage, but to an extent that most players never notice. Wheelchair players, he said, can really feel it, though, and it is more tiring to play outside.

“That causes problems for us,” said Lane. “We’re pushing uphill and downhill. Indoors is nice and flat, and really smooth.”

That said, Lane has played not only indoors and outdoors, but on all tennis court surfaces as well, including grass and clay.

“We play indoors, we play outdoors, and we’ve played on clay,” said Lane. “We experimented on grass at the Hall of the Fame (in Newport, RI). I don’t think I’d want to play a whole match on it. Clay is a hard material, too.”

Hard like the lot he was dealt in that car accident back in 1994. Or that’s the way a lesser person might have looked at it. But for Dick Lane, it was the start of something new.