Tennis For Fun Comes To Tampa Palms!

On a slightly warm but otherwise perfect Thursday evening, a dozen or so special needs adults gathered at Tampa Palms Golf & County Club to learn how to play tennis, like they do every week.

They squealed with joy when hitting a ball back over the net, and laughed when they failed. A handful of volunteers gently tossed tennis balls their way, and would swat them back with hands, or catch them and throw them back, to help teach coordination. Some were determined to complete their tasks, while others were there primarily for the fun of it all.

“It’s so great,’’ Judy Moore said. “It’s just a big social event.”

Moore runs Tennis For Fun, a free tennis clinic for athletes with special needs. Tennis For Fun is a volunteer organization that teaches basic tennis skills, and stresses socialization, specializing in working with athletes of all ages who are intellectually handicapped, especially those who have Down Syndrome.

Moore’s son, Nathan, started the program 16 years ago as a high school senior at Tampa’s Jesuit High. He wanted to create something to do for special needs athletes, no doubt inspired by his mother, who had taught special education and religion for years.

Since then, Tennis For Fun has grown, from a humble beginning with just a few athletes in Brandon to now including eight different locations (Fishhawk Ranch, Tampa Tennis at Hillsborough Community College, Sandra Friedman Tennis Complex on Davis Islands, and Tampa Palms in Florida), in three states (Florida, Maine and Minnesota), with more than 100 athletes competing.

At Tampa Palms, they were wearing new, bright green T-shirts donated by ALOT (A League Of Our Own Tennis), and playing with racquets donated by other players and clubs. Interbay Tennis, a large Tampa Bay women’s weekly tennis league, also has provided assistance, and Tennis For Fun also has received grants to help pay for nets and balls. Both Tampa Palms and Hunter’s Green Country Clubs are designated as Special Olympics training centers.

In 2011, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) awarded the USTA Adaptive Tennis National Community Service Award to Tennis for Fun. “We were pretty proud to get that,’’ Moore says.

More than a dozen of the 100+ athletes currently competing in Tennis For Fun are at Tampa Palms, which recently added the program under the direction of tennis player and Tampa Catholic High assistant coach Marla Adams. Adams will run the clinic through May 26, every Thursday, 4 p.m.-5 p.m., for the 18-and-over athletes; Marla’s son Clay, a freshman tennis player at Tampa Catholic, coaches the 17-under group from 5 p.m.-6 p.m.

Clay, who originally got involved because he was trying to earn service hours at school, and Marla first met Moore while volunteering at the Brandon location. Moore had received some requests to start a program in New Tampa, but until she met Marla, she had no one to run it.

“I met her and she asked where I lived, and I said Tampa Palms,’’ Marla says. “She said, I have someone who wants to start a program (out there) but doesn’t want to be the head of it.”

Marla and Clay accepted the challenge. For Marla, it was a personal decision. When she had been pregnant with Clay, she was told there was a chance he would be born with Down Syndrome, or a full or partial extra copy of chromosome 21, which alters the course of an individual’s development.

Clay ended up not having Down Syndrome, but Marla said that moment stuck with her. So, when the chance arose to work with Down Syndrome children and adults, she says couldn’t resist.

With the Adamses working closely with Kass Pilczuk, the New Tampa YMCA Adaptive Coordinator, and Tampa Palms head pro Tom Judson, the program debuted last November.

“Kass has been very instrumental in helping us launch in New Tampa,’’ Marla said. “She has filtered a lot of her athletes at the YMCA through here.”

The response in New Tampa, says Moore, has been terrific.

While the Brandon program has more than 90 athletes, ages 8 to 58, New Tampa has seen its numbers steadily grow.

“People started talking about it, and people started coming,’’ says Dora Rattes, one of the volunteer coaches and supporters who helped bring the program to Tampa Palms.

Rattes used to take her special needs daughter Esther to Brandon to play tennis in the program. It was far from convenient, however.

“She really enjoyed it,’’ says Dora. “But I was thinking, we have Tampa Palms here (in New Tampa), and we have Hunter’s Green…”

Rattes knew there were enough special needs athletes in New Tampa to support such a program, and she knew there was a need. For many older special needs athletes, there is often little to do and few programs to participate in past high school.

“It is very important for them to stay active,’’ she said. “This is a sport they can play for life. This isn’t like soccer or basketball where you need a team to play. This is something you can do with just one other player.”

Esther is one of the program’s more advanced and experienced players. She recen

ly competed in the Special Olympics tennis at HCC March 19, and Marla says the plan for next year is to teach and send a large contingent of New Tampa special needs players to the event.

For now, the group is working on the fundamentals, growing their clinics and putting smiles on the faces of athletes learning the joy of a new sport.

For more information, call Judy Moore at 685-3923 or 417-3751, or visit TennisForFun.net.