ABOUT US
In 1961, a small group of friends shared a deep commitment to their struggling community and a belief in the transformative power of tennis.  They recognized that by focusing on the well-being of youth, they could improve the health of the entire community.  These beliefs led them to establish Sportsmen’s Tennis Club (now Sportsmen’s Tennis & Enrichment Center, STEC), the first African-American non-profit tennis club in the country, in one of Boston’s most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. They knew that quality tennis instruction and interaction with caring adults could develop well-rounded young citizens, and, through tennis, STEC began to identify and fill gaps that weaken youth, families and community.

MISSION
 
STEC builds leaders on the court, in the classroom and in the greater community by providing academic, wellness and social development programs alongside recreational and competitive tennis instruction for youth and adults. STEC is committed to improving life opportunities for youth in Boston's Blue Hill Corridor while welcoming a diverse community from the Greater Boston area.

Over the past fifty years, STEC has engaged more than 60,000 in our programs, opening the doors of opportunity for those who are often at-risk of not achieving their full potential.  Hundreds of our youth have gone on to attend colleges and universities on full or partial tennis scholarships and dozens have been top-ranked regional/national players. In addition, many more have improved their health, study skills, grades, standardized test scores and overall achievement as a result of STEC programs.

In recent years, STEC academic and enrichment programs have grown to become a core element of our programming.  To better reflect this fact, in September 2011, we changed our name to Sportsmen’s Tennis & Enrichment Center. This year we also brought all of our academic and enrichment offerings together under the umbrella of The Learning Center (TLC) at Sportsmen’s, which now includes comprehensive, year-around academic and enrichment programming for students in grades  K-12 and young adults up to age 24 who have dropped out of school. 

STEC has become the only organization in Boston to provide a comprehensive menu of tennis programs, incorporating instructional, recreational and high performance tennis and to offer K-12 academics. STEC provides tennis and education for life.

OUR HISTORY (top)
STEC is located in Harambee Park, which is part of the Frederick Law Olmsted Emerald Necklace.  Harambee, a Swahili word meaning “pull together,” is fitting for STEC - we were created 50 years ago by committed community residents pulling together through their shared belief in the power of tennis to make a difference in their community.

Since its inception, STEC has been guided by a vision of tennis as a sport that can open doors of opportunity and hope, doors which should be open to all members of society. While promoting excellence in tennis, we identify and fill gaps that weaken our youth, families and community.

STC was the first African–American tennis club in the US. The founders were committed to introducing and teaching tennis to inner city Boston youth. They believed that quality tennis instruction and interaction with caring adults could develop well-rounded young citizens.

For over 50 years Sportsmen’s has been a guiding force in the lives of thousands of low and moderate– income minority youth. The Club has helped introduce local players to worlds of opportunity, and the world of tennis to Boston.

Some of our historic highlights include:

• In the early to mid 1970’s, in just our first few years of operation, STEC’s 16 and under team was the New England Lawn Tennis Association (NELTA) Suburban League champions, our 12 and under team was the NELTA Indoor League Champions, a 12–year–old STC junior won a NELTA sanctioned singles tournament, and our 18 and under team was NELTA’s League Champion, undefeated in ten matches.
  
• Club founders Jim & Gloria Smith organized a STEC’s USA/Soviet Union Goodwill Tennis Tour in 1989, allowing our Juniors to travel to and play in the Soviet Union.
  
• In 1998, Harvard University’s Men’s Team played its first match in the inner city against Penn State at STEC.
• In 2006, STEC was chosen to host a $50,000 International USTA Women’s Pro Circuit Tennis Tournament.  We continue to host the tournament the last week in June every summer;
• In 2009, STEC launched our Match Point Community Partnership Initiative, bringing free tennis to thousands of local youth in schools, community centers and out-of-school time programs;
  
• In 2011, the USTA presented STEC with the ICON Award, recognizing 50 years of growing inclusion and diversity in tennis;
• In 2011 we changed our name to Sportsmen’s Tennis & Enrichment Center to better reflect our focus on education and the comprehensive programming we provide.
  

By 1999, founders estimated that 30,000 young people had grown up with STEC helping them to learn about life and tennis. Today, that number has grown to exceed 60,000 young lives touched.

STEC TODAY (top)
OUR GOALS
Fifty years ago, our founders established STEC because they believed in the transformative power of tennis and because they were deeply committed to their community.  Today, STEC reaffirms this commitment with our 2010 strategic plan, which refined our mission, vision, goals and target population. Through the plan, we established a catchment area within a 1.5 mile radius around STEC that includes parts of Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury within the Blue Hill Corridor to better focus our services for maximum impact. 

Two overarching goals now guide our work - (1) to improve the educational outcomes and future opportunities and (2) to increase the physical activity for our target population, which is the community of youth and young adults living within our catchment area. These youth are some of the most challenged and underserved in the City of Boston.  They face some of the highest rates of poverty, teen pregnancy, violence, obesity and cardiovascular disease in the city. 

Through the planning process we identified five organizational goals for FY11 – 13, which address the pressing challenges our youth face.

Goal 1: Insure that students in every school within a 1.5 mile radius of STEC have access to the recommended levels and frequencies of weekly physical activity by the end of FY2013.

Goal 2: Partner with local youth-serving organizations, such as the Boston Police Youth Services and other academic programs to provide physical activity for at least 350 children in other organized out-of-school time programs.

Goal 3: Create similar partnerships with local health centers to refer overweigh and obese youth, particularly those with sedentary lifestyles, to STEC for free programs.

Goal 4: Further develop our out-of-school time academic programs, including those offered during summer camp, to increase the MCAS and classroom scores of participants.

Goal 5: Create specific outreach and funding models to make out-of-school time programs more available and utilized by residents of the Franklin Field Apartments.

OUR PROGRAMS
Annually over 4,500 youth participate in STEC programs, which fall into three categories – (1) youth tennis, (2) academic and enrichment and (3) community outreach. Youth tennis programs range from school-based that focus on getting youth active through tennis, to competitive training for serious young athletes. Academic and enrichment programs make up The Learning Center (TLC) at Sportsmen’s, which seeks to improve the academic outcomes for youth grades K-12 with a focus on the gateway subjects of literacy and math. Community outreach programs include partnerships with schools, community based organizations and health centers to provide specialized programming for specific populations. All STEC programs share the common denominator of tennis and work to counteract the challenges urban youth face, fostering winning habits that translate into the social and emotional intelligence necessary to succeed in both the classroom and the community.

THE NEED FOR STEC
STEC serves youth within the Blue Hill Corridor - one of the most challenged and underserved areas of Boston that includes parts of Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan. These communities have some of the highest obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease rates in Boston, no doubt caused in part by an alarming and recurrent combination of factors in low-income neighborhoods:

• Youth live with an ongoing fear of violence when they step outside due to high rates of crime and gang activity.
  
• The area has far fewer safe recreational facilities than other Boston neighborhoods.

• The Blue Hill Corridor has been deemed a “food desert” for its dearth of supermarkets and outlets for fresh, healthy foods.
  

In our target area, 10,000 K-12 aged children live within blocks of three areas which the Boston Police Department has deemed are youth violence hot spots. In 2010 there were 72 homicides with 70% occurring in Dorchester, Mattapan or Roxbury and over 86% of the 22 youth homicides occurred in the area.(1)

 
The impact of this violence reverberates throughout the community. Children and families are effectively held captive in their homes as streets on which many STEC staff members grew up riding bikes and walking to school are no longer filled with active youth. This lack of regular physical activity, combined with limited physical education in schools, a lack of recreational facilities and a lack of available fresh produce and nutritious foods, has paved the way for an obesity epidemic in our community.

The World Health Organization reports that regular physical activity helps prevent and control feelings of anxiety and depression, that the more often adolescents participate in physical activity, the less likely they are to use tobacco, alcohol or other drugs, and that children who are more physically active showed higher academic performance and less of a tendency towards violent behavior.(2)

Studies show that low–income children are significantly more likely to be overweight and/or obese at a younger age than other youth and suffer more frequently from asthma and other conditions.

STEC works to counteract these statistics, providing youth with access to quality training that will lead to a lifetime of physical activity and on-going personal development.

MAKING TENNIS ACCESSIBLE FOR EVERYONE
STEC is committed to making our programs accessible for all demographic segments of the community - youth, teens, adults and seniors.  To do so we:

• Do not charge court fees for youth when the courts are not in use.
• Provide discounts to families with more than one child enrolled in any program.
• Offer a limited number of scholarships based on financial need.
• Have nominal court and membership fees for adults.
• Offer special rates and programs for senior citizens.
• Furnish racquets and balls to any student who needs them so no child is turned away for want of equipment.
• Underwrite the cost of tournament and league participation for some families that cannot afford the cost for instruction.