Pictured above: A look at QCV’s service area.
Charlottesville, Virginia (9/24/2019) – QuickStart Tennis of Central Virginia, Inc. (QCV) is pleased to report that on August 31, 2019, the organization completed its tenth year of serving the Central Virginia community. Over the past 10 years QCV has:
- Trained more than 2,000 people to teach kid-sized tennis
- Taken Tennis in PE to 246 schools with 112,000+ students in 31 counties and five independent cities in Virginia
- Reached almost 20,000 kids with our Go Bananas for QuickStart! healthy-eating and life skills for kids campaign
- Created 45 Go Bananas! cards for 45 different foods and life skills with 45 different tennis players/coaches as role models
- Helped create or refurbish Grow Veggies for QuickStart! “tennis gardens” at 11 schools
- Introduced tennis to almost 2,000 disadvantaged and at-risk preschoolers at 13 public schools through BrightSTARS–Tennis for Me!
- Assisted in the startup of three other Community Tennis Associations that serve and program 11 counties and 3 cities in our service area
- Raised $307,000 to buy tennis equipment for schools, parks & recreation departments, Boys & Girls Clubs, purchase racquets, balls and Go Bananas! giveaways for kids and build six kid-sized tennis courts in Crozet
- Received financial support from 48 foundations and charitable trusts, 48 corporate donors and 71 individuals, with many making multiple contributions
Lynda Harrill, QCV QuickStart Coordinator, says, “That list of accomplishments looks pretty good to me. If someone had told me 10 years ago we’d do all that and a lot more as a small, all-volunteer organization, I would have thought they were nuts for sure. We’re the only USTA Community Tennis Association, out of more than 750 in the country, that pursues a strategy to accelerate the growth of kid-sized tennis through deliberate and sustained outreach to underserved communities, mostly rural areas, and help those communities start a pathway of tennis programming. We went directly to the public schools to reach the most kids, the fastest. After 10 years, we have 97% coverage of public elementary and middle schools in our 30-county/city service area, and we’ve taken tennis to high schools and private schools, even to 37 schools outside our service area.”
QuickStart Tennis of Central Virginia is an all-volunteer, grassroots Community Tennis Association established in 2009 as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization to promote, develop and grow QuickStart Tennis in the heart of Virginia for all beginners, especially underserved youth, using the kid-sized QuickStart Tennis format.
QCV’s service area includes Albemarle, Amelia, Appomattox, Brunswick, Buckingham, Charlotte, Culpeper, Cumberland, Dinwiddie, Fluvanna, Franklin, Greene, Greensville, Halifax, Henry, Louisa, Lunenburg, Madison, Mecklenburg, Nelson, Nottoway, Orange, Patrick, Pittsylvania, Prince Edward, Powhatan and Rappahannock counties and the cities of Charlottesville, Danville and Martinsville, plus under a special arrangement, King George County. We currently serve 209 schools with 96,000 kids, 15 parks & recreation departments, three Boys & Girls Clubs and two YMCAs in 27 counties and three independent cities. We have also gotten tennis into PE classes in 37 additional schools with 16,000 students in communities outside our service area.
Visit QCV at www.quickstartcentral.org and on Facebook. For additional information, contact quickstartcentral@comcast.net
