Tennis Program Opens Doors
"When I started playing I was about six years old. I had been dabbling around with racquets and balls before that. But that's when I really started playing," said Levar Harper-Griffith.
Eighteen-year-old Harper-Griffith turned pro less than a year ago. But already people who know tennis are predicting big things from this young man who says tennis is his whole life.
"It's everything almost. It's opened doors for me that, I mean, that normally wouldn't even be an option. Traveling around the world, the people that you meet, and things like that. Tennis has just created things in life for me," he said.
Growing up in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, Harper-Griffith found his life transformed by a program created by tennis great Arthur Ashe. Ashe began the National Junior Tennis League in 1968 to bring tennis courts and free lessons to the inner city.
"I think that growing up where I grew up, you see some of the struggles that people go through and you're trying to make a breakthrough in the sport and you are trying to make a breakthrough in life in general," explained Harper-Griffith.
Ashe's goal was to expose kids to a game and a world that had traditionally been closed to them. Today the program serves 165,000 kids in tennis centers across the country like this one in the shadow of a Bronx housing project.
"We think tennis is a great game and we want to bring it to everyone and give everyone an opportunity to play," said Rodney Harmon, the director of multicultural development for the United States Tennis Association. He also got his start in the National Junior Tennis League.
"I think there are life skills that a person can learn from tennis that can transcend their whole life. It can provide an anchor for them. It can give them something that they really can claim for themselves. We have a tremendous amount of success stories," said Harmon.
The biggest success stories of the Junior Tennis League may be Venus and Serena Williams, who have inspired legions of little girls.
Like many alumni, the Williams sisters devote much of their off-court time to giving free workshops for inner city kids.
Harper-Griffith wants to be successful enough in the game to give something back as well.
"There's much more important things than going out and hitting a little ball around. A lot of these kids don't really have any kind of direction in there lives," said Harper-Griffith. "If I could help some kids along the way, then that would be more special than any accomplishment I could ever do on the tennis court."