Next week at the U.S. Open, the United States Tennis Association will recognize the Ed Yarbrough Tennis Complex in Jasper as a 2025 Outstanding Facility Award recipient.
The program honors facilities that demonstrate exceptional standards in construction, renovation and ongoing maintenance, while showing a dedicated commitment to fostering tennis growth and development within their communities.
The Jasper complex is named for Ed Yarbrough, who coached tennis at Jasper High School for over forty years. Scott Yarbrough, Ed’s son and current tennis coach, spoke with Inside INdiana Business about his father’s legacy and the facility’s amenities.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me about Ed Yarbrough.
He graduated from Jasper in 1964 and then came back to become a teacher and a coach in 1969. He was a basketball, football guy who wanted to be a head coach. And they offered him the tennis job with zero experience as a tennis coach. And he couldn’t play tennis if you paid him a lot of money. So he applied his basketball knowledge: work hard, be in shape, work on fundamentals.
I started taking tennis lessons at a pretty young age, and he would go to the lessons. This was in French Lick. Michael Connell was the pro. Then Dad would use those lessons at practice. And he read books and watched videos and things like that. He was a self-taught fundamentalist.
When he retired, he had the most wins of any tennis coach in Indiana high school history. He finished with 885 wins. He won a boys’ state title in 1999. He also won a girls’ doubles title in 1999.
Talk about the tennis complex.
The Ed Yarbrough Tennis Complex includes 12 outdoor courts and four indoor courts. The indoor facility was one of Dad’s dreams. When Dad first started coaching, there were only four tennis courts. When the new high school was built in 1976, they built nine courts. And in 2003, when they completely redid the sports complex, it went from a nine-court to a 12-court facility that he got to design.
I came back to coach with him in 2003. He was trying to come up with an idea for indoor courts. In 2008, he started to raise some money. He organized a reunion of his past players and raised $40,000 to $50,000 for this indoor facility. Then he passed away on June 19, 2010.
At that time, we were in limbo about what we wanted to do. Then a friend of mine, Roger Seger, who had kids in the program, and myself got together and worked on an indoor facility. In November of 2011, we built two permanent indoor courts at Jasper High School. It was a metal, clear-span building and two tennis courts: no bathrooms, no waiting area, no viewing area.
In 2013, we added a bathroom and a viewing area. In 2022, we added two more courts and extended the viewing area on the other side. So you have two courts on the right, two courts on the left. And then you can sit upstairs and look left or right.
All of that was built with the school giving no money. That was all raised by Jasper’s tennis families. $1.3 million. And it’s only heated. We don’t air-condition it in the summer. It does sit on the high school property. The Jasper Tennis Patrons built it and then donated it to the school.
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(photo courtesy of Jasper High School Athletics)
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(photo courtesy of Jasper High School Athletics)
Tell me about applying for the USTA Outstanding Facility Award.
I got an email one day about facility awards. My assistant coach happens to be a tech guy, so we threw the drone up in the air and took a bunch of pictures and made it look real nice and presented it. We filled out the nomination in late April.
In late May, I got an email congratulating us on being recognized as an outstanding facility. I’ve never been to New York or the U.S. Open. And that’s where you get to go to receive the award. It’s going to be me and our superintendent, Dr. Tracy Lorey.
How does it feel for the complex to receive this recognition?
In June, we won the girls’ state title for the first time in school history, and we won another doubles state title—that makes three in a row. And before all that happened, we learned that we were one of the [2025 USTA Outstanding Facility Award] honorees. Right after we won the state title, the following Monday, we started our tennis camp, and we hit a whole new high of 350 campers. So it was a wonderful three to four-week span.
What makes the Jasper tennis facility one of the best in the country?
The outdoor facility is always lit. It’s on high school property. It can be used by anybody. The indoor facility, we do what are called sponsorships, but you can have access to that and hit balls.
The best part about it is when we run high school events and junior tournaments and U.S. events, it’s a great place to watch. You don’t have to watch through a lot of courts. The viewing is very nice. We have a viewing deck at the 12-court facility, so you can sit up top and overlook all 12 courts. The indoor has a nice viewing area where you can see both courts. Everything is lit. So you can hit at 9 or 10 o’clock at night if you want to.
The indoor facility, we did ourselves. But the outdoor facility, the school has to pay for that. Courts have to be fixed every five or six years. They crack. They become bad. And the school gets a lot of credit for upkeeping our facility. We just finished sticking a couple of hundred thousand dollars into our middle school courts.
How does the complex benefit the community?
It resides in Jasper, but the facility is used by many people. It’s used by a lot of the county kids as well. The facility was built for our high school and junior high programs, but we do have some adults who will come in the morning and use it. It’s open to the public. If they want to be a sponsor, they’re welcome to do that.
We run our indoor court through USTA. There’s a court scheduler, so you can hop on and reserve a court. What’s interesting is that this facility was built 15 years ago, and we just won our first girls’ state title. A lot of these girls on this team started playing tennis when they were three, four and five years old. So you’re reaping the rewards of something you built 15 years ago.
What’s next for the tennis facility?
We want to possibly add a scoreboard to the facility that would probably fall under the high school. We’ve discussed expanding the viewing deck, making it a little bit larger. But the thing that concerns me the most is the upkeep. We want to stay on top of it being in great shape and the courts having great playing ability and presenting a nice facility year-round.