USTA Florida Hosts 74th Annual Meeting and Mentors the Future through Leadership Academy

USTA Florida held its 74th Annual Meeting of the Membership on November 18, 2023, welcoming community members virtually to unite around everything happening in Florida tennis in the past year. On top of that, the organization held its first Leadership Academy Program workshop of the year, mentoring participants and helping them prepare to become industry leaders. 

Meeting of the Membership 

Board President, Phil Girardi spoke about USTA Florida’s year and highlighted some key issues the organization is looking at. When it comes to the strategic plan, there are four important goals USTA Florida is tackling.  

1. Pursuing innovative growth opportunities that attract, engage and retain new and diverse participants
2. Creating a system and structure that maximizes volunteer engagement
3. Working with industry partners to attract new and diverse coaches
4. Providing comprehensive support to public parks

While these remain focal points for the organization, USTA Florida has been making an impact in each of these areas throughout 2023. The organization has been extremely committed to its Women in Tennis initiative, giving all women a space to thrive in. There were four all-girl tennis camps hosted this year as well as Women Speaker Bureaus, with more coming in 2024. 

USTA Florida with the help of PTRW and other industry partners, has held many women and girl empowering events.

USTA Florida also partnered with SwingVision, bringing cutting-edge technology to the game. On top of that, the organization expanded its wheelchair tennis program, teaming up with Brooks Rehab and introducing a Love to Roll program, making it easy to integrate wheelchair players into the adult beginner program. Additionally, USTA Florida continues its commitment to AMPLIFY, USTA Florida’s initiative to support HBCUs, coaches, and partners in the black community. 

Girardi also highlighted the expanded volunteer structure for USTA Florida. In 2023, a team of USTA Florida volunteers & staff was created to develop a proposal on a new volunteer-driven system and structure to recruit, train, manage, retain, and recognize volunteers in all aspects of the organization with a key focus on advocacy, fundraising, community coaching and event support.  

“We put together a taskforce together because we realize there is a disconnect between the ground and upper level of volunteers,” Girardi said. “This new system will introduce three pillars, with advocacy playing a big role.” The proposed volunteer system and structure includes the three pillars that will enable volunteers and staff to work side-by-side within each pillar to advance our mission and goals. Those pillars are Leadership, Growth, and Intro.

Volunteers are what make Florida tennis special and are vital to its growth.

In 2024, the team will focus on expanding the Volunteer Intro Pillar, as well as building the foundation of the Growth Pillar with a focus on Advocacy; empowering & encouraging local advocates to step into a regional leadership role. 

Advocacy is another word that is constantly on the minds of those involved with USTA Florida. A brand-new, four-phase, Advocacy Program was launched earlier in 2023, and will be carried out through 2024. 

The first three phases saw a research team come together to study other organizations to gather best practice and learnings. This work was reviewed by and incorporated into the larger Volunteer System and Structure Project. Then, six Volunteer Advocacy Professionals were asked to participate in a Program Development Project to develop roles, confirm core issues and messages, and develop regional advocacy plans. Finally, the last step is to introduce and implement the program, which is coming in 2024. 

Another key focus for USTA Florida has been in its Community Coach Program. With more than 1.6 million tennis players in Florida, there is a need for coaches for all skills, abilities, and ages. In 2023, USTA Florida hosted over 25 coaching trainings, with nearly 200 participants. The organization also hosted its first-ever women-only training, as well as high school curriculum training.

The Community Coach Program offers many different classes, such as wheelchair tennis.

“Having more coaches is one of the biggest needs for our section,” Girardi said. As we look ahead to 2024, you can expect to see more trainings across the state.  

Public parks were and still remain one of the best partners in the industry for Florida tennis. “We continue to invest heavily in public park partnerships and programs,” Girardi said. “We opened our fourth managed facility, Riverside Racquet Complex in Vero Beach. We are working on advocating for the addition of courts to small and mid-sized facilities through both financial investment and management support.” 

Nothing would be possible without the countless hours of support from our volunteers, partners, and staff. The organization is thankful for everyone that gives back to the game and is excited to see what 2024 brings.  

Leadership Academy Update 

Earlier in 2023, USTA Florida accepted applicants for its Leadership Academy program, which aims to bring new and diverse volunteers into the organization. This year, USTA Florida welcomed more than 20 diverse volunteers into the program.  

The Leadership Academy prepares a select group of volunteers to become leaders in the tennis industry.

From ICU Nurses and former US Military members to Sales Professionals and Tennis Coaches, the newly introduced cohort offers a diverse group of ideas, skills, and age to change the game on and off the courts. 

On November 12, USTA Florida welcomed those accepted into the program for their first in-person workshop. This provided 21 future industry leaders with training, education, and mentorship from existing Board members. They also got to hear from people such as USTA CEO, Lew Sherr, who talked to them about leadership and innovation, as well as Dr. Safi Bachall, Physicist, Entrepreneur and author of Loonshots. 

Everyone in attendance also had the opportunity to dig deeper into some of USTA Florida’s initiatives and even brainstorm ideas to improve them. They also engaged in an exercise that helped them identify and understand others’ communication and leadership styles.  

They participated in exercises and left with things to test for the next few months.

Furthermore, Leadership Academy participants left the workshop with experiments to run over the next few months that they will report back on in April. The experiment groups comprised of 2-3 Leadership Academy participants led by a Board Member coach. These experiments were focused on 4 key themes: Growing the Game, Engaging the Next Generation, Technology and Working with Volunteers. 

Overall, the goal of this program is to prepare these volunteers to become industry leaders at the grassroots tennis level. With the guidance from USTA Florida and the Board members, the organization is confident that these future leaders of tennis will help take the sport to another level.