{"id":898831,"date":"2026-10-29T14:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T14:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898831\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T14:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T14:44:12","slug":"cincinnati-tennis-foundation-breaks-ground-on-10-million-tennis-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/898831\/","title":{"rendered":"Cincinnati Tennis Foundation breaks ground on $10 million tennis center"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CINCINNATI \u2014 The <a class=\"Link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cincinnatitennisfoundation.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cincinnati Tennis Foundation<\/a> broke ground Wednesday on a $10 million tennis and education center designed to give more young people in Greater Cincinnati access to sports, academic resources and mentorship.<\/p>\n<p>The First Serve Tennis and Education Center will serve as a year-round campus featuring indoor tennis and pickleball courts, classrooms, a community hub, a kitchen and fully accessible amenities.<\/p>\n<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793285051_690_.jpeg\" alt=\"47599963-image_7EA41121-1335-4C31-BC30-ECC834636864_1793221979.jpeg\"  width=\"760\" height=\"570\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Photo provided<\/p>\n<p>The project has raised more than $8 million toward its $10 million goal, including a $3.5 million cornerstone gift from the First Serve Community Fund.<\/p>\n<p>The center is intended to address barriers that can prevent young people from participating in organized sports, including financial limitations, transportation challenges and accessibility needs.<\/p>\n<p>According to the foundation, 75.1% of youth in Greater Cincinnati from households earning less than $25,000 do not participate in organized sports.<\/p>\n<p>Once completed, the center is expected to add 800 hours of after-school programming each year and provide academic support, mentoring, nutrition and life-skills programming to at least 50 young people daily.<\/p>\n<p>            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1793285052_580_.jpeg\" alt=\"47599963-image_E80C4C35-DE91-4C7D-81C4-358936B08635_1793221955.jpeg\"  width=\"760\" height=\"570\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Photo provided<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, it\u2019s really important to us that this is not just a bunch of tennis courts. We have a very integral community hub space. It\u2019s going to have classrooms to fit almost 100 kids. We\u2019re going to have kids receiving nutrition, math, reading, and financial literacy every day, with a full-time educator,&#8221; said Matthew Dektas<br \/>CEO, Cincinnati Tennis Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>Then they\u2019ll also play sports like tennis and pickleball, and maybe even others.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The foundation also expects the facility to double the number of youth and athletes with physical and intellectual disabilities it serves annually.<\/p>\n<p>The project is part of the foundation&#8217;s Rally for Dreams campaign, which aims to create a permanent home for tennis, education and community programming.<\/p>\n<p>Construction is underway at 1920 Tennessee Ave. in Norwood, with completion expected in fall 2027.<\/p>\n<p>This story was reported by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CINCINNATI \u2014 The Cincinnati Tennis Foundation broke ground Wednesday on a $10 million tennis and education center designed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[53998,3410,99,428,3412],"class_list":["post-898831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-9-on-your-side","tag-cincinnati-news","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-wcpo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}