Riley Jackson
Jay Clayton Wilson
A lot of SaddleBrooke Tennis Club members eagerly volunteer to serve our club in every conceivable capacity. Almost all of their jobs are pretty visible, like the president or those who put social events together. Everyone knows them by name. But there are a few who perform difficult jobs in the background, unsung and often unappreciated, far away from the lights. Riley Jackson has been that sort of volunteer for the past several years.
In years gone by Riley served on the Board three times as treasurer and he participated in STC events in a variety of capacities including the coordination of tennis matches. However, his primary contributions to the club and its membership have been in two very important, but less visible, roles. He is the STC webmaster and he is chairman of the HOA 2 Tennis Committee.
From his earliest days as a club member, he has been an avid supporter of our website. Riley has been involved with the STC website since 2001 when John Holmes was webmaster. John actually owned the original program and leased it to STC. In 2011 John decided that the programs needed to be rewritten due to a number of technical changes in his original tools. The upgrade would require more effort than John wanted to put in, so he asked Riley to help with the rewrite. Riley located a professional programmer, Bud Alexander, who is a SaddleBrooke resident. Together they convinced the Board and, ultimately, the membership that a completely new system was needed and that it should belong to the STC rather than to the programmer. Bud agreed to work with Riley to write the new program using the latest online technology and public domain (non-Microsoft) tools for a fee of $6500.
In 2011 Riley prepared and successfully used a PowerPoint presentation to convince the membership that the new program was needed. Consequently, it was agreed that Bud would write the code for a new program named GOST (Good Old SaddleBrooke Tennis). STC would receive ownership of the new system. GOST was finally completed and went online in September of 2012.
Note that sitting at a keyboard is not a high profile position. It is way, way behind the scenes, sometimes late at night, but it is the kind of volunteer position that Riley accepts.
The same should be said of his position as chairman of the HOA 2 Tennis Committee. One rarely hears of it even though it is of enormous importance. That committee liaises between STC and the HOA Board of Directors.
Riley views the Tennis Committee as the representative of the tennis community to the HOA 2 Board of Directors. It is our advocacy and communication arm. Board members are very busy with a wide range of issues across the entire community, so it’s important for the tennis players to have a voice. Riley believes, and the membership agrees, that the Tennis Committee provides valuable assistance to the HOA 2 Board and to the SaddleBrooke tennis community.