BY HUGH D. PALMER
Delta Business Journal

If you have watched any sports on TV or been to a tennis match, golf tournament, football, baseball or soccer game in the the last couple of years, it might surprise you to know that the tennis surfaces, the field marking paints, grass dyes, and graphic team logos were probably supplied by a company in Leland called World Class Athletic Surfaces, Inc.

Some of the their customers: Denver Broncos, Miami Dolphins, several Super Bowls, the Orange Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, NASCAR, major league baseball, corporate television, southeastern colleges, and even your local high school football teams use World Class.

World Class Athletic Surfaces is a manufacturer of acrylic sports coatings, synthetic playground surfaces, and associated products. The company is enjoying the success of a clientele list that includes many of the highest profile professional, public and private sports facilities in the world.

World Class Athletic Surfaces, Inc. was founded in 1988 by Tra DuBois a native of Yazoo City and Boo Hollowell an attorney in Greenville. DuBois got into the business by playing on the tennis team at Belhaven College in Jackson. After college, DuBois gave tennis lessons which took him to Houston, TX. There he met and worked for a man named, Ron St. John, owner of a company called Teni-Trak, Inc., that specialized in tennis court and track construction.

Having played on many types of surfaces, DuBois gained valuable experience in design and construction of all types of tennis courts and sports facilities especially while working for the Texas company. A few of the tennis projects Teni-Track, Inc. built were for Senator Lloyd Bentsen, S.M.U., Ross Perot, Governor Bill Clemons, Owen Davidson, and Rod Laver.

During his tenure with Teni-Trak, DuBois was fortunate in having the opportunity to use and test most of the tennis products on the market at that time. The testing and the conclusions would later become instrumental in helping him develop many of the World Class products. It was during this time that DuBois also got the idea to manufacture his own coatings.

"In 1987, the time was right," says DuBois. "Most of the tennis court coating manufacturers are located in the Northeastern part of the U.S., so I thought if someone were to manufacture in the South, the business would work. I thought that with the playing experience, the construction experience, the location and a really good product, we should have an advantage over our competition. So, I moved home to Mississippi, put in a small plant and started developing our formulas and World Class Athletic Surfaces was born."

"We were fortunate in the beginning that a couple of my friends were starting a company in the tennis court construction business," says DuBois. "Max Nalder, a fellow Belhaven tennis player from Australia and Lee McGaugh from Ackerman had just started Australian Courtworks. They were a big part in our early development and ten years later they are great friends and one of our largest contractors."

DuBois is quick to mention how the Mississippi Department of Economic and Community Development has worked closely with him in getting his company to where it is today.

"I grew up in Yazoo City and our backyard butted right in to Jimmy Heidel's who was my hero growing up," says DuBois. "It's very ironic that many years later, he would play a part in our business."

World Class Athletic Surfaces now distributes their tennis products throughout the U.S., Europe, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Asia. The Chinese Athletic Association recently selected World Class as their exclusive tennis surface for China, Hong Kong, and Macaw. Their products have also become the surface of choice for discriminating clients such as clothing designer Ralph Lauren and the NCAA tennis championships. The Nick Bollettiere Tennis Academy is where many of the top ranked professional tennis players such as Monica Seles, Pete Sampras, Marceillo Rios, Mary Pierce, Anna Kournakova, Boris Becker, and Martina Hingis practice and work on their games. They all practice on a surface provided by World Class.

A couple of years into the business, a call was received at World Class and someone had a request for some paint to paint lines on a football field. World Class approached this project with the same intensity and standards as they had the tennis court coatings. The results were similar also. The customer that made the original request not only placed an order, he made several calls to other coaches and they ordered from DuBois as well. Before the end of the year, local high schools, Mississippi State, University of Alabama, University of Georgia, and Memorial Stadium were using World Class athletic field marking paints. The word was starting to spread and DuBois was finding himself in another startup business within the company.

As World Class started to grow, DuBois and Hollowell started putting together the 'Team' as they call it which is consists of Delta residents, Lynda Richardson, David Simmons and Tyrone Wright. A major theme behind DuBoisÕ success is hiring the right people and spreading the wealth among employees. It's working.

Two years ago, DuBois, once again stumbled into another opportunity directly related to what he was already providing: the manufacturing of graphic logos for sports fields. Under the leadership of company team members Simmons and Wright, the two figured out a way to stencil logos on the playing field. Many of the logos are as large as 150 feet long by 30 feet wide - a daunting task in the beginning. Calls poured in for this new service and DuBois was off and running with this part of his business as well.

Most recently, World Class has added products such as grass dyes used on sports fields and golf courses, field marking paints in convenient aerosol cans, inline skating and inline hockey surfaces, and safety and playground surfaces.

DuBois is quick to turn over any praise that he receives to his employees.

"It's been a team effort," says DuBois. "Everyone here is really committed to the goals we are trying to achieve. A company is only as good as the people that work there and we happen to have some good ones.