NEW YORK—For 40 years the sound of children playing tennis has filled the Harlem Armory, as the home of the Harlem Junior Tennis Program. One of the first kids enrolled in the program was a 12-year-old named Dante Brown.
“It is the age-old story, the kid who grows up in the inner city, always getting in trouble,” he said.
His introduction to tennis came at age 10. “One day, I was coming home from a fight, dirty and bloody and there was a guy who lived in my building who saw me coming. He asked if I wanted to learn to play tennis. I said ‘yes’ because it was something different,” Brown said.
He played against a wall just five blocks from his house, something that he found amazing. “I had never been five blocks from where I lived,” he said.
The neighbor took him to local tennis courts 15 blocks away, something that opened Brown up to a whole new world outside of people he knew from his neighborhood. He enrolled in a summer public tennis program, where he excelled.
At age 12 the kids and adults he met through the summer program encouraged Brown to play tennis indoors during the winter—something he had no idea was even possible.
Brown applied to the new program at the Armory and was accepted. While sharpening his tennis skills, he was given educational direction outside of just homework. The program introduced him to opportunities he never knew was possible and he wound up receiving an athletic scholarship to Southern Illinois University.
