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City Parks
Foundation’s 16th Annual
CityParks Tennis Benefit
at the 2013 US Open Tennis Championships
City Parks Foundation’s annual CityParks
Tennis Benefit,
co-chaired by Billie Jean King and John McEnroe, was held on
Tuesday, August 27 at the USTA Billie Jean King National
Tennis Center. The event, which welcomed 250 guests, raised
over $200,000 for CityParks
Tennis, a
free youth instructional program that serves over 7,000
children in parks throughout New York City each season.
Held each year at the US Open
Tennis Championships, the event, hosted by Budd Mishkin,
features a cocktail party, dinner, silent and live auctions,
and tickets to the Open session matches in Arthur Ashe
Stadium. This year, City Parks Foundation honored Eric
Fromm, a native New Yorker and the former #38 tennis player
in the world with the 2013 Vitas Gerulaitis Community
Service Award. Fromm currently serves as the Managing
Director for SPORTIME, which runs 144 state-of-the-art
indoor and outdoor tennis courts.
The event also honored CityParks
Tennis youth
player, 14 year-old Daniel Corona, with the Billie Jean King
Junior Award. Daniel, of Fresh Meadows, began playing
tennis with the program at Cunningham Park, before he earned
a spot in the Chase
Aces year-round
intermediate level program and this past summer landed
himself in the City Parks Foundation Junior
Academy presented by LACOSTE, an annual
tournament-training program for experienced players held at
the Billie Jean King Tennis Center.
CityParks Tennis,
one of the largest municipal tennis programs in the country, provides
free tennis lessons and activities at 40 parks citywide to
children ages 6-16. CityParks
Tennis also
features an advanced training academy, which offers talented
youth with financial need the opportunity to bring their
game to a higher level of competition. Hundreds of academy
graduates have earned college athletic scholarships and
sectional and national rankings. Two graduates of the
academy have played in the junior division at the US Open.
City Parks Foundation (CPF) is
the only independent, nonprofit organization to offer park
programs throughout the five boroughs of New York City. We
work in over 750 parks citywide, presenting a broad range of
free arts, sports, and education programs, and empowering
citizens to support their parks on a local level. Our
programs and community building initiatives reach more than
600,000 people each year, contributing to the revitalization
of neighborhoods throughout New York City. For more details,
please visit www.CityParksFoundation.org.
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