On paper, the concept looks great.

On the court, there are nothing but smiles.

In the end, every participant relished the experience.

So why hasn’t the West Penn Inter-Club Mixed Doubles Junior Team Tennis Championships — the brainchild of Butler Country Club pro Whitney Snyder — taken off?

Good question.

Easy answer: Indifference.

It’s not that tennis pros from other summer youth organizations don’t like Snyder’s idea of bringing the four best youth tennis players — a boy and girl each in age 12-under and 18-under divisions — from each organization together for a friendly, fun mixed doubles competition in a relaxed atmosphere.

They just can’t be bothered with it.

“This is like a tennis all-star game,” Butler Country Club assistant pro Doug Johnston said in 2004. “It’s the best of the best. Everybody is proud to be here and should feel that way.”

The West Penn Inter-Club Championships have been around for 16 years now. It’s a fun event that could be so much more than it is.

If only tennis pros in Western Pennsylvania would cooperate.

The most clubs to participate in this event in any given year has been 12. This year, there were six. Snyder invites 32 clubs or more every year.

The response from these clubs has been pathetic.

Mark Paull, club tennis pro at Forest Hills for 24 years, has brought his club champions to this event for each of the 16 years it’s existed.

“I make sure our junior club championships are held before this event,” Paull said. “Our champions know they get to come here. They look forward to it. It’s a perk.”

That’s the way every youth tennis organization in Western Pennsylvania should view this thing.

Snyder does not stage this event every year to put a feather in the cap of Butler Country Club. Not at all.

In fact, years ago, he envisioned the West Penn Inter-Club Mixed Doubles Championship involving so many organizations that it would be held at North Park every year, a huge cookout being part of the day.

That hasn’t happened and that’s a shame.

The West Penn event provides youths the rare opportunity to play mixed doubles while meeting and interacting with fellow youths from other areas.

A few years ago, Snyder described local tennis pros as “Pied Pipers within their own organizations.”

They should be bonding together to form momentum for an event like this, not turning and looking the other way.

BCC assistant pro Matt Kaye once said: “I would have loved to play in something like this when I was a kid.”

Butler resident Courtney Gallagher played in five consecutive West Penns and said: “The clubs that aren’t participating ... They’re missing out.”

Indeed, they are. And they need to wake up.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle