Tennis Memphis seeks approval to run free after-school and in-school programs in Shelby County middle schools

Tripp Willis, representing nonprofit Tennis Memphis, asked the Shelby County Board of Education’s Community Outreach and Engagement Committee on Aug. 12 for district permission to provide free in-school and after-school tennis and tutoring programs at Shelby County middle schools, starting in the Whitehaven neighborhood.

Willis said Tennis Memphis’s National Junior Tennis and Learning (NJTL) programs pair one hour of certified teacher-led tutoring with one hour of tennis instruction, provide a healthy snack and offer scholarships into the organization’s junior development pathway. “Our number 1 mission is to bring visibility and accessibility to tennis,” Willis told the committee, and he said the group is fully funded for the next two-and-a-half years to deliver programming “at no cost for parents, for family engagement, for in the school between the bells, everything for coaches.”

The request: coordination and permission to access schools, plus clarity about operations and oversight

Why it matters: Tennis Memphis said the programs are designed to increase physical activity, academic supports and postsecondary exposure for students; the organization asked the district to authorize visits during PE or recess, confirm feeder patterns, and coordinate with district athletics and partnerships offices to ensure adult supervision and background checks for coaches.

Superintendent Roderick Richmond and other district staff responded with procedures and cautions. Richmond said about 20 high schools currently field tennis teams and recommended Tennis Memphis contact district athletic director India Weaver to identify feeder middle schools and to confirm interest. “We have approximately 20 high schools now who currently participate in tennis,” Richmond said. Board and staff members emphasized that school interest must be generated locally and that any on-campus programming outside the school day may require club-team status, background checks and a logistics agreement with the district’s partnerships office.

District staff also described operational limits and supports: schools can support club programs when an adult sponsor is present; the district does not currently pay middle-school coaching stipends for tennis; and the partnerships or athletics office would coordinate introductions between Tennis Memphis and principals or athletic directors. Willis said Tennis Memphis is “all SafePlay certified” with background checks and would provide programming in multiple neighborhoods and feed interested students into its junior development and scholarship programs.

Questions from board members focused on data sources, equity, and facilities. Several board members queried Willis’s cited local statistics and asked that presentation data be current; Willis said his figures were drawn from state sources he had located (he cited 2023 data). Board members asked that the organization coordinate with district leaders to map feeder patterns and ensure equitable access across regions rather than concentrating in a single neighborhood. Willis said Tennis Memphis would start in Whitehaven and expand to Bellevue, Raleigh and Frayser where the organization already operates facilities.

What’s next: District staff said they would pass Willis’s contact information to the athletic director and principal offices and arrange an introduction to explore site-by-site interest, background-check requirements and whether the program would operate as a school club or through district partnerships. No formal committee vote was recorded; Willis left the meeting having been directed to meet district athletics staff to continue planning.

Ending note: Tennis Memphis’s proposal drew support from committee members who praised its tutoring-plus-activity model but pressed for current data and a feeder-pattern approach to ensure equitable rollout.