The City of Austin and Travis county have issued shelter in place orders.  All non essential businesses are ordered to close. ATA closed as of the deadline last night.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this over the past few weeks as we anticipated this response to the COVID 19 pandemic and have the following thoughts:

I believe each and every one of us should follow the shelter in place order for the prescribed 2 weeks.  This is a challenge for everyone on many fronts.  I think it is easy to take for granted no one we know personally has gotten sick or died, yet.  

However, I believe this virus is bad news and the sooner we limit its scope, the longer we postpone it getting really, really bad, like in Italy or now New York. The more we flatten the curve the longer we give the big brains in our society a chance to come up with a vaccine and/or anti-virals, the quicker we will be back on the court and our economy will prosper again with minimizing sickness and death.
 
We take pride in developing citizens of significance.  We put ourselves out in the public with our students, parents and colleagues in the coaching community as leaders.  If we violate this order, what kind of example are we setting for our students?  That in a crisis, we know more than the experts?  That our lesson income is more important than the health of someone’s elderly relative living with them?   That two weeks of training is going to make the difference in one of students junior tennis career? I think this is a perfect opportunity for us to walk the walk of being a good citizen.  For the good of all our neighbors we will stay home for two weeks.  I think in two weeks we will have much more information than we have today and can make better decisions at that time on how to move forward.  I would rather err on the side of caution than take a risk with the health of our students and their families or our coaches and their families and for that matter anyone in the ATA community.

Some of you may have a different opinion about COVID 19 and your response to the shelter in place order, I can respectfully disagree. 
I’m pretty sure not many businesses can take more than a 2 week break, maybe 4, but after that I think everyone will be reassessing where we go with this pandemic.  Like all small businesses, ATA has a limited amount of cash.  Like all workers, ATA coaches need to teach to provide for their families. The question I have wrestled with is this:  how much is a life worth?  If by sheltering in place, not getting infected and thereby not infecting anyone, do I save lives.  

The things I see in Italy and now New York scare me. 

I am willing and I am asking ATA coaches to be willing to give up 2 weeks to protect folks in our community.  Two weeks now might mean a lot more than two weeks in a few months.  We are not offering any group or individual programming at ATA this next two weeks, the pro shop, gym, ball sheds and restrooms will be locked. 

It’s going to be a rough few weeks, but I think in the next two weeks the government will get it’s act together and ATA and all of us individually will be able to take advantage of the trillions of dollars that are going to be fed into the economy for small businesses and individuals.
 
We are still working on obtaining more capital so that ATA can continue to function in case of a longer shutdown. And, we have already completed all the paperwork to apply for SBA disaster relief loans once that is rolled out. I will keep you up to speed on our process to obtain more capital to weather this storm.

I am committed to supporting our coaches who need financial help to weather the pandemic as it goes through Texas and their income is impacted by this shelter in place order. I am committed to having ATA come out of this massive health crisis better than we were before. We have begun getting virtual tennis going and will continue to grow that while we are not on court. 

I am super proud of the way we have handled this crisis so far: our health and safety protocols and social distancing have been great.  This two-week break is another element of trying to do things right and do the right thing. We have attempted to operate ATA this way from Day 1. 

We have a chance to get some new exciting things going at ATA, lets get pumped about WHAT WE CAN DO. Let’s accept the challenge and see what we can do from home.  

All my best,
Coach Newman