Scholar Athlete Program<\/a> for three years. The program gives students academic support and top-tier tennis instruction, sending 100 percent of its\u00a0graduates to college.<\/p>\nAlthough NYJTL will serve nearly 90,000 students across New York City this year, their Scholar Athlete program selects only a hundred.<\/p>\n
Since its founding by Arthur Ashe \u2014 the first Black man to win singles titles at the US Open, Australian Open and Wimbledon \u2014 NYJTL\u2019s mission has been to help develop young people during the sport, but also outside of it.<\/p>\n
Tennis, Tambar\u00a0said, is unique in the ways that it develops both individual and team skills for athletes. If you have a bad turn of events on the court by yourself, he said, \u201cYou have to dig deep to get out of it. But you train with a group of people as a community. You have a family that supports you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Developing tennis skills both on and off the court, Tambar said, has been part of the organization\u2019s DNA for more than\u00a050 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a blessing for New York City parents to have something like this that\u2019s public,\u201d said Nikolay\u2019s mother, Tamara Klioutchnikov, regarding NYJTL\u2019s programming. It\u2019s especially special, she said, given that tennis can be so expensive.<\/p>\n
Originally from Ukraine, Tamara works tirelessly to support her family. She teaches English as a Second Language, often having to work overtime hours. Tamara, her husband and their two kids have been based in Bensonhurst for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n
Tennis has been integral to their lives since her daughter, now 24, took an interest in the sport as a teenager, all the way up until the 2026 U.S. Open.<\/p>\n
Making the Cut<\/p>\n
During tryouts, Nikolay said he had to do exercises to test his fitness, including intense ball rolling and ball tossing to practice for the tournament. One of the most integral elements of their job, he said\u00a0was nailing their hand signaling to players on the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think they really care how athletic you are,\u201d Nikolay said. \u201cThey mostly care about how you can move on with your mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
That lesson has been relevant to Nikolay in more ways than one.\u00a0He noted he not only made mistakes during this year\u2019s practice trials, but also that he had been rejected from the program when he had applied the first time last year.<\/p>\n
This year, he felt his essay was much stronger.<\/p>\n
During the tournament, Nikolay uploads his availability for shifts during matches and hears back about his schedule the night before. Each shift was 90 minutes, and he worked between one and three shifts a day.<\/p>\n
Despite the chaotic nature of the ballcrew\u2019s tasks \u2014 constantly being on alert, sprinting back and forth during match points and knowing when and when not to be in communication with players \u2014 Nikolay said his team prepared him well.<\/p>\n
The first few days of work, he said, he practiced\u00a0during qualifiers where there were little to no attendees in the stands.<\/p>\n
Nikolay\u2019s favorite part of working at the US Open has been his crew. \u201cEveryone is super friendly and understanding of the new people that show up,\u201d he said. \u201cEven the people that have been doing this for many years.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the US Open comes to a close Sept. 13, the winning athletes won\u2019t be the only tennis players walking away having advanced their tennis careers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year\u2019s global tennis tournament featured one of Brooklyn\u2019s very own on the court. With more than $100…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-345032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}