Last Friday, nearly 100 kids gathered at Howard Bennett Playground in Harlem to learn about tennis, experience the sport, and also hear about financial literacy. The USTA Foundation, the charitable arm of the United States Tennis Association (USTA), again partnered with Chase to award 13 National Junior Tennis and Learning (NJTL) chapters $350,000 in total grants to support year-round tennis, education and life skills programming.
Harlem Junior Tennis and Education Program (HJTEP) is among the NJTL chapters receiving a Chase Return the Serve program. Founded in 1972, HJTEP works with kids ages five to 18, at any level of tennis skill, providing tennis instruction and academic support, including tutoring.
“I look forward to bringing tennis into the community, as usual,” said Simone Spigner, HJTEP program director. “We have our kids from the USTA Foundation excellence team coming out as volunteers. We want to make sure our participants understand the concept of giving back.”
The volunteers are members of HJTEP’s tournament team. These are the more advanced young players, many of whom go on to play in college. HJTEP covers the costs of equipment, private lessons and tournament fees for those players. In return, the players are required to do community service projects and to maintain a 3.5 grade point average.
“We always have them come out and help at these types of events, and they do such a great job,” said Spigner. “We train them to work with younger children. We help them engage with the children and they help the children have fun. We teach them games and how to demonstrate tennis strokes. They receive a lot of mentorship from our staff, which reflects on how they deal with children in the community.”
Spigner said every time HJTEP participates in these kinds of events, the organization then hears from about 30 interested applicants. There was an event earlier this year at Riverbank, and this year’s summer camp had many new participants. The organization also goes into New York City public schools to teach tennis.
“Our staff, we all came from public tennis courts,” Spigner said. “Some of our kids, we met through our community outreach programs and we offer them scholarships. Tennis for all. As long as HJTEP is around, they always have a place with us.”
