Category: Court Shoes

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Laces Add Colour to Bland Shoe Options

Female racquet sports players in Canada are often frustrated by the lack of selection available in court shoes. In Canada, it seems, you can have any colour you want — as long as it’s white.

In the United States, where tennis is a major sport with millions of frequent players, shoe buyers are able to bring in lots of shoes in lots of different styles and colours. Here in Canada, however, where tennis is not a major sport and where wholesalers are in jeopardy of getting stuck with unsold inventory at the end of the season, the buyers are more conservative.

In contrast to American buyers, Canadian buyers bring in lots of white, a little black and very little of anything else FOR MEN. In the case of women’s shoes, they offer even fewer options. White or white with a small splash of pink, a hint of baby blue or a touch of coral is often the full extent of colour options for Canadian women.

Truth be told, the same is true for racquet sports apparel. More than 70% of the ladies apparel offered to our buyers by Canadian wholesalers is white, while 20% is black and the remaining 10% — at most — is another colour, usually one colour per season. The guys get more colour options than the women, primarily because male racquet sports players outnumber female players by about 10 to one. But white and black still dominate the men’s apparel category, too.

So Canadians who enjoy a bit of colour in their racquet sports wardrobe have learned to accessorize. Coloured laces, for example, add some colour to all white tennis or pickleball shoes. Add a matching sock increases colour intensity. Wristbands, headbands, hairbands, visors, racquet grips, overgrips, strings and other accessories can also provide accessorizing colour on top of a base coat of white.

“Some tennis players are sensitive to colour options,” says Genevieve Johner at Racquet Network’s southwest Calgary store. “but pickleball players, especially ladies, are obsessed with it. If their shoes don’t match their pickleball paddle, they aren’t interested.”

Fortunately, Racquet Network now carries laces and other colourful accessories that make this possible for pickleball players and everyone else.

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Reduce Foot Fatigue with EZ Laces

Most Canadian men tie their court shoes too tight. In doing so, they cut off some of the circulation to the veins and arteries running across the tops of their feet. This leads to premature foot fatigue.

In order to reduce foot fatigue, most Canadian men need to learn a couple of new things about tying their shoes. First, court shoes are not hockey skates. They should not be tied like skates because tying court shoes as tight as skates hampers blood flow which leads to foot fatigue. Court shoes should be tied so that they stay on your feet, no tighter.

The second thing most men need to learn is that oval laces are better for blood circulation than flat laces and elastic laces are even better than oval laces. Why? Because flat laces flex the least. Oval laces flex more and elastic laces flex the most. So when a shoe is laced with elastic laces, stopping and changing direction rapidly does not momentarily strangle the blood vessels across the tops of the feet.

These two small but important details explain why we have fallen in love with EZ Laces at Racquet Network. First, installing EZ Laces on court shoes virtually assures that they will never be tied so tight as to be unhealthy. Second, even under the highest levels of athletic stess, the laces across the top of the feet will always flex with the athlete’s movement.

Once they are correctly installed, EZ Laces immediately turn tie-on shoes into slip on shoes. They also make it virtually impossible to step on a lace and pull it loose in the middle of a point. As an added bonus for parents and coaches, installing EZ Laces onto children’s shoes means that nobody will have to stop practice so that somebody can tie their shoes.

The only downside to EZ Laces is that, until you have done it a few times, they can be difficult to install. While the company that manufacturers them offers step-by-step instructions supported by video tutorials, it rarely goes as smoothly in person as it does in the video tutorial.

No worries. When you buy EZ Laces in our southwest Calgary store, our technicians will install them for you at no extra charge. All you have to do is choose from 15 lace colours and eight lock colours. We will do the rest. It takes about 15 minutes and you are good to go.

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Men’s Squash Shoes – Size 13, 14 & 15

YONEX SHB 55 WHITE ORANGE
Men’s Squash Shoes – Sizes 12-15
Racquet Network offers Calgary’s largest selection of court shoes for all racquet sports, including squash. With more than 2000 cubic feet of dedicated shoe storage, our customers know that it makes sense to start here first.

In addition to common adult sizes for men and women, Racquet Network carries a full range of junior court shoes as well as extra large men’s sizes including sizes 12, 12½, 13, 14 and 15.

Racquet Network also works hard to ensure that we have wide court shoes in stock at all times. In addition to men’s standard widths, we do our best to offer wide and extra wide shoes for men, which is why it is not unusual to see current and former CFL players in our southwest Calgary store.

Wide Court Shoes

Since we opened our first retail store in 2012, Calgarians have come to trust us as the place to go for court shoes of all kinds. This is especially true for customers with wide feet. They know that our shoe buyer works hard to ensure that we have a steady supply of wide court shoes for men and women.

Unfortunately, customers with wide feet have also learned that the overall selection of genuinely wide court shoes is extremely limited in Canada. While people with standard width feet can choose from a panoply of colours and styles, people with wide feet have very few options. And since the sporting goods giants do not offer wide shoes, they can spend a lot of time running around looking for something that only Racquet Network is likely to carry.

Find Out if You Have Wide Feet

Racquet Network experts are trained to fit people correctly. If you have wide feet, we can help you. If you think you might have wide feet, we can help you too. Come and see us. Our experts will help you figure out your true size and width.

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Asics Court Shoes

Racquet Network carries Calgary’s largest selection of ™ court shoes for men, women and juniors. In fact, we have the largest selection of court shoes of all kinds. Come in for a fitting with our experts and leave with the perfect fit for your feet. We are open 7 days a week. Monday to Friday 11:00am to 8:00pm. Saturday and Sunday 11:00am to 5:00pm.

Shoe Selector For a full list of shoes in this category, please check out our ONLINE SHOE SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, width and price.

Asics Court Shoes

Shoe Selector For a full list of shoes in this category, please check out our ONLINE SHOE SELECTOR. You can sort by sport, gender, brand, size, width and price.
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Help! My Toenails are Turning Black

Are one or more of your toenails turning black? Yes. Then your shoes are too small. Specifically, your shoes are too short for court sports.

Here at Racquet Network, our expert staff are constantly astonished at the number of stubborn people who come into our store to buy new shoes because the shoes they are wearing are damaging their feet and who end up buying exactly the same size, expecting a different result.

Here is how a typical conversation with one of these customer’s goes …

Staff: “Hi there. How can I help you?”

Customer: “I need some new shoes. The shoes I have are too small. They are making my toenails turn black.”

Staff: “Oh no. That’s not good. What size are they?”

Customer: “They are size 9.”

Staff: “OK. So would you like to try on something in a size 10?”

Customer: “No. Size 10 is too big. I wear a size 9.”

Staff: “I’m sorry. I must have misunderstood. I thought you said your size 9 shoes were causing your toenails to turn black.”

Customer: “Well these ones are. But I just need a different size 9. I am always a size 9.”

It is never good when a fitting starts this way, but this is exactly the way many fittings start. The customer has a number in their head and no amount of expert advice or actual evidence will sway them. So, they end up leaving with the wrong size in spite of our best efforts to convince them otherwise.

Fathers of teen-aged daughters can be especially frustrating for our shoe experts. Some of them seem to think that their daughters are less attractive if they wear shoes that actually fit, so they buy shoes that are too small and that end up causing injuries.

This not a joke. It’s not just a story we tell. This actually happens. We have seen teenaged girls leave our store in tears because they know that the shoes their fathers are buying for them are too small and will make their toenails fall off. We have had angry fathers storm out of the store because we demonstrated to them that their daughter’s feet are a size and half bigger than they used to be.

We’re not sure why but men in general rarely seem to know their shoe size. “What size are you?” we will often ask. “Size 10,” guys will say. “What size are those?” we ask, pointing at the shoes on their feet. When we check, we usually find out they are not even close to what they thought they were wearing.

Racquet Network staff are trained to fit people for court shoes. Our staff know that court shoes have to be longer than walking-around-shoes because players have to stop suddenly and change direction. When shoes are too short for this, toes bang against the end of the shoe causing toenails to blacken and fall off.

Our staff also understand that width is important. When a player’s feet are wider than the platform of the shoes they are wearing, they are prone to specific types of injuries that can lead to arthritis later in life.

Our experts want to see all customers leave our store with shoes that fit. They don’t have any preconceived ideas about that size the customer should wear or what size the customer (or their father) might want to wear. They only thing they are concerned about is what actually fits. For that to happen, the shoe must be long enough and it must be wide enough.

At the end of the day, though, they can’t force anybody to buy the right size. So they will always have to deal with the disappointment of customers who stubbornly resist their best advice and insist on buying shoes that are too short or too narrow just because that is the size they always buy.