While its eponymous founder prepares for the year's second Grand Slam tournament at Roland Garros, the Sloane Stephens Foundation is celebrating its own big win: The National Junior Tennis & Learning chapter, based in Compton, Calif., was awarded Sports Business Journal’s 2023 Celebration of Service award on Wednesday night in New York City.
Founded in 2013 by Stephens, her mother Sybil Smith, and her uncle Roland Smith, the foundation has reached more than 15,000 children in Compton and the surrounding neighborhoods through tennis, mostly through a program with the CUSD called “Love Love Compton” that makes the foundation the largest provider of youth tennis in Southern California. The foundation also runs a high-performance program in south Florida.
The award, given annually in conjunction with the magazine's Sports Business Awards ceremony, "recognizes the power sports has on improving society and in building community." In addition to Stephens' foundation, the 2022 US Open was named Event of the Year at the ceremony.
Stephens has been an advocate for the youth within her foundation since its inception, and in 2019, the 2017 US Open women’s singles champion, was appointed the USTA Foundation's first National Excellence Program Ambassador. In the role, Stephens bolsters the five pillars of the Excellence Program, including individual player grant support, coaching education, activations and the expansion of the NJTL network in program activations, all while supporting the USTA Foundation’s overall mission, its programs and individual player success stories. The USTA Foundation Excellence Program is designed to provide under-resourced junior tennis players an opportunity to fulfill their coaching, equipment, tournament and travel needs at no cost. These students are high-performance tournament level players who compete at the regional, national and international levels.
“The USTA Foundation, we share the same passion for growing the game and sport, giving the kids the opportunities,” Stephens said in 2019. “For me, to be able to give back and have other kids look up to me, I think that's really cool. NJTL has done a lot for youth sports, especially youth tennis. It grows the game, gives kids the opportunity to play.”