The tennis courts at Halls Ferry Park are sporting a new hue of bright blue.

The new playing surface is a continuation of the improvements tennis director Rick Shields has brought to the Halls Ferry Road facility. Other improvements include banners promoting recent state champions from the Mississippi High School Activities Association tennis tournaments and a summer-long weekly morning tennis camp for Warren County’s youth.

“The United States Tennis Association has gone to that color for many of its tournaments and that’s what we opted to go with,” Shields said. “It’s livened up the courts a good bit and it looks great.”

A record number of kids with rackets is giving a big boost for the sport’s future in Vicksburg. That’s a big goal of Shields, who played college tennis at Alcorn State.

“We have close to 65 kids here each morning, Monday through Wednesday,” Shields said. “They are getting instruction in how to play the game not only from me, but Coach Leonard Banks, and many of our recent state champion players like Christine Figueroa, Steven Cialone and Michael Foley.”

Foley, who won a Class 1A doubles title with Cialone back in May as an eighth-grader at St. Aloysius, was working a new group of potential stars on Wednesday. He likes how Shields, who is his coach at St. Al, has improved the facility and brought a teaching emphasis to the youth camp.

Building a diverse program is another Shields goal.

“If you look at the camp makeup, it’s pretty evenly divided between girls and boys, black and white,” Shields said. “What’s even better, is that we have plenty of good athletes. We’ve got a big group from St. Francis along with some from the city. But they are all here getting acclimated to tennis.”