Hello Kentucky Tennis family! Let me start by first saying, thank you. Thank you for your love of tennis and your support of this great game! Thank you for playing, coaching, teaching, and supporting, but thank you most for SERVING - and I don’t just mean serving up a tennis ball!
The theme for our Annual Meeting in January was, “Find Your Serve,” and I want to expand on this theme because it’s at the heart of who I am and what USTA Kentucky strives to be.
For me, “my serve” is understanding the power of sport and using that knowledge to make the world around me better. I’ve found no other tool that is as effective as sport in bringing people together, cultivating relationships and bridging barriers. To that end, I am excited about what USTA Kentucky is doing to bring in players from all walks of life - from our Hispanic initiatives that are taking hold around the state, getting racquets in the hands of diverse and often-times underserved kids and expanding wheelchair and adaptive tennis programming to people with disabilities, we are using tennis to build bridges, connect people and ultimately to grow our game.
Sport in general, and tennis specifically, allows our differences to fade and we realize we are the same as the person across from us…we’re all just trying to get the ball over the net and keep it in bounds! Some of us do that better than others (all of you better than me!) but when distilled down, on the court we are the same…we are lovers of this beautiful game and appreciate what it teaches us about ourselves, how it drives us to get better – to BE better, how it gives us treasured friendships and allows us to grow. The ways tennis has served us is so much bigger than the final result on the court and so, we return tennis to our families, our friends and our communities because we know the impact it can have on their lives too.
So, what does finding your serve mean to you? Maybe it’s becoming the best player you can be. Maybe it’s paying it forward by teaching/mentoring someone else or volunteering at an event. Maybe it’s bringing the snacks to a Jr. Team Tennis match, running your CTA’s social media accounts, or helping fundraise for your local CTA or the Raise a Racquet Foundation. Maybe you or your business can sponsor a tournament, event, program or even this yearbook! We all have our own, unique special ways of finding our serve, none more important than any other and the truth is, growing tennis in our state doesn’t work unless we all find our serve.
I am excited about what the future holds for tennis in Kentucky and how, together, we will make it better! If I can serve you in any way, please let me know!
Sincerely,
Rainey Johns
USTA KY President