USTA Serves has awarded an $8,000 grant to The Orthotic & Prosthetic Activities Foundation, Waterloo, Iowa, for its First Volley Adaptive Tennis Clinics.
The national initiative of USTA Serves, the National Charitable Foundation of the United States Tennis Association, is a bi-annual grant process developed to provide disadvantaged at-risk children the opportunity to learn and play tennis and improve their academic skills in a structured format, as well as to help combat childhood obesity by promoting healthy lifestyles. Programs that successfully combine tennis and education to help children pursue their fitness and education goals are eligible to receive the grant, according to a press release.
“We’ve been offering the clinic to anyone with a physical challenge, both ambulatory and wheelchair players,” Robin Burton, executive director of OPAF, said in the release. “First Volley offers these participants a chance to try tennis with instructors who have been trained to work with our population of amputees, children with cerebral palsy, stroke and brain injury survivors and more.”
