The House That Larry Built: TC Central To Rename Tennis Facility After Long-Time Coach

His last name is Nykerk, but you might as well call him “Mr. Traverse City Tennis.”

For 50 years, Larry Nykerk coached tennis at Traverse City Central High School, including lengthy dynasties leading both the boys and girls teams. He also built a long-running summer tennis camp that, in 2026, will mark its own half-century milestone. And along the way, he raised tens of thousands of dollars for tennis facilities throughout Traverse City.

Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) will celebrate all those contributions this coming weekend by officially renaming the tennis facility at Central High School in Nykerk’s honor. The new “Larry Nykerk Trojan Tennis Center” will be unveiled at an open-to-the-public ceremony scheduled for Sunday, August 3 at 10am.

“I think it was supposed to be a surprise, but my kids are flying in for it, so we had to coordinate a date that they could be there; the whole thing was scheduled around that,” Nykerk laughs. “So, it’s not a surprise, but it is a huge honor. There have been some movements to try to [rename the facility after me] over the years, but the reason it was never successful is that TCAPS had a policy of not naming anything after anyone until they were...well, dead! I think the only exception was Ida Tompkins.”

Tompkins was a 44-year TCAPS employee, and the district’s first-ever female administrator. When she retired in 1994, the district named its (now-former) administration building on Boardman Avenue in her honor. She later served on the TCAPS school board, and was inducted into the Traverse City Central Hall of Fame in 2007. She passed away in 2019.

Nykerk, 79, is no stranger to accolades. He was inducted into the Michigan Tennis Coaches Hall of Fame in 1999, and was added to the Traverse City Central Hall of Fame alongside Tompkins in 2007. In 2018, he made it into the all-sport Michigan High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame, one of just a few Traverse City coaches ever to do so. During his tenure at Central, he also won regional coach of the year honors 28 times, was named Michigan tennis coach of the year thrice (in 1984 and 2007 for boys tennis, and in 1997 for girls), and was shortlisted for national coach of the year once, in 2011.

Nykerk’s tennis legacy in Traverse City now reaches back the better part of six decades, to 1968, when he launched a brand-new junior varsity boys tennis program at Central.

“That’s back when Central Grade School was the junior high school,” Nykerk recalls. “Ninth grade was at the junior high, and the JV program was mostly ninth graders. So, I’d go over there to meet them, and we’d run over to Thirlby Field for practice, because that’s where we had our JV courts.”

Nykerk must have done something right with the JV program, because the very next year, he was promoted to varsity head tennis coach.

“From there, I coached the guys right on through until 1998 or ’99, then I took a break,” he says. “The girls team, I picked up in 1981 – that program had started in the mid-70s, and there were two coaches before me – and I did that up until 2017.” Nykerk also circled back to the boys varsity squad in 2007, coaching that team again through 2014.

By the time he called it a day, Nykerk had coached a combined 76 seasons – 40 with boys tennis, 36 with girls. He left TCAPS with a total of 1,050 career meet victories – more than any other high school tennis coach in Michigan history – as well as 40 regional championship titles and dozens of state finals appearances. He also coached 65 players to 100 wins or more, and 13 to individual state champion titles.

Despite retiring from his “day job” eight years ago, Nykerk remains an integral part of the Traverse City tennis community, thanks to Grand Traverse Tennis Camps, which offer all-ages tennis instruction throughout the summer months. The camps, which Nykerk founded and continues to run with the help of his wife Mary and his assistant coach Cliff Girard, will celebrate their own 50-year milestone next summer.

All those years of coaching led to a community push last year to rename the Trojan tennis facility after Nykerk, an option TCAPS board members approved at an October 21, 2024 board meeting. While trustees acknowledged that TCAPS policy generally discourages naming buildings after individual people, they ultimately voted unanimously in favor of honoring Nykerk, with multiple trustees arguing that his legacy exceeded whatever “high bar” the district had for breaking its own policy.

One factor that helped Nykerk? His legacy wasn’t just about coaching.

“We’ve also done 50 years of fundraising,” Nykerk tells The Ticker. “When I started coaching, we had just four cement courts [at Central]. Four courts wasn’t enough, so we raised the money to build four more. Eight courts wasn’t enough, so we put in two more. And when the time came to put in the team room building [at the Trojan tennis center], I wrote a bunch of grants for that.”

For many years, Nykerk adds, TCAPS “didn’t have to pay a penny” for upkeep and improvement work on the Central tennis facility. And ultimately, the Nykerks – with the help of Sara and Eric Bergsma, who co-ran an annual fundraiser called Friends of TC Tennis for 16 years in the 2000s and 2010s – came up with enough money not just for the facility needs at Central, but also to help support tennis at other Traverse City schools.

“We gave money to West. We helped TC Christian and St. Francis. We did work at both middle schools,” Nykerk says. “It was called ‘Friends of TC Tennis,’ after all, and we wanted to live up to that name by raising funds for all the school facilities.”

“Truthfully, that group raised so much money, and really created tennis in Traverse City,” TCAPS Board Vice President Erica Moon Mohr said at the October meeting. “Larry is a legend, and I think rightfully deserves those tennis courts to be named after him.”

TC Central Athletic Director Justin Thorington concurs, noting: “Larry is synonymous with tennis in Traverse City.”