How Can We Attract and Retain More Children to Tennis

Summary

Danielle McNamara — former head women’s coach at Yale University and the University of Texas, former college player at University of Michigan — joins Lisa Stone to diagnose why tennis fails to attract and retain young children at the rates that soccer, basketball, and baseball do. McNamara, now a stay-at-home mom to two young sports-playing children, published a paper on Medium.com outlining four structural features of successful youth sports that tennis lacks: little to no travel, low cost, early organized competition, and a team element. The episode traces her aha moment to watching packed soccer fields next to empty public tennis courts at her son’s U8 soccer games in Hamden, Connecticut. She and Lisa develop a practical vision for local community tennis programs structured like youth soccer — run through park-and-rec, coached by accessible tennis professionals, with team jerseys and weekly competition — supported by a national organization providing insurance, marketing, and infrastructure. The conversation explicitly indicts USTA’s mission misalignment and calls for a new organizational actor to execute at the grassroots level.

Guest Background

Danielle McNamara grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and began playing tennis around age 8. By age 10 she had specialized and was competing nationally. She earned a scholarship to the University of Michigan, where she played for coach Bitsy Rit from 1996–2001, double-majoring and spending five years to graduate. After playing briefly on tour, she entered coaching: first as an assistant at Yale, then as head coach at Yale for eight years, then briefly as head coach at the University of Texas before returning to Yale for a second stint of five years. She stepped down from coaching in 2021 and began consulting with the ITA. At the time of this episode she is the mother of a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old who both play multiple sports — an experience that gave her ground-level exposure to how youth soccer, basketball, and baseball are structured compared to tennis.

Key Findings

1. Four Structural Failures of Youth Tennis vs. Other Sports

McNamara’s Medium paper identifies four features present in youth soccer, basketball, and baseball that tennis lacks at the introductory level: (1) little to no travel — all competition happens locally within the town or neighborhood; (2) low cost — her son’s 13-week U8 soccer program with weekly practice, weekend games, and a full uniform cost $100, compared to nearly $1,000 for a U8 red ball tennis clinic with no competition and a 45-minute drive; (3) early organized competition — soccer and basketball have game competition from week one, no waiting for children to achieve a minimum technical threshold; (4) a team element — children play for a team, with teammates, which drives belonging and retention in ways individual sport cannot.

2. The Cost Gap Is Stark and Structural

The $100 vs. $1,000 comparison for equivalent age and duration programs is not an edge case — McNamara frames it as the direct consequence of tennis’s structural dependence on private clubs. Junior Team Tennis (JTT), USTA’s team-format offering for young players, is in most areas accessible only through private clubs, which immediately layers on membership costs, travel, and facility fees. McNamara ran the only JTT U10 team in all of New England not based out of a private club — operating through park-and-rec — and found that when she practiced on public courts, parents walked up constantly asking how to enroll their children. Demand is not the constraint; access infrastructure is.

3. The Net Generation Curriculum Exists But Isn’t Being Executed

McNamara acknowledges that USTA’s Net Generation pathway — red/orange/green/yellow ball progressions, scaled courts, scaled rackets — is “a huge step in the right direction” as curriculum. The failure is at the execution layer: there is no mechanism to actually put that curriculum into the community at the park-and-rec level with consistent coaches, organized competition, and team structure. The curriculum exists; the delivery infrastructure does not.

4. The “One-Off Event” Problem

Lisa and McNamara identify a recurring pattern: USTA chapters and Community Tennis Associations run one-day clinics where equipment arrives, kids play, kids love it — and then the organization packs up and leaves. There is no follow-on program, no team to join, no coach to return to. The episodic event format generates excitement without creating the retention infrastructure that weekly participation requires.

5. A Franchise Model With Centralized Infrastructure Is the Solution

McNamara’s proposed solution is a national organization that provides the “infrastructure items” — insurance, website, marketing templates, potentially even a for-profit business structure for local operators — and empowers local coaches (high school coaches, retired college players, college graduates, assistant college coaches) to launch community programs. She cites the soccer premier club model as a direct analogue: premier clubs send coaches into town park-and-rec programs as a pipeline for their own competitive programming. Private tennis clubs could replicate this, building feeder relationships with community-level participants.

6. USTA Is Structurally Misaligned With Grassroots Growth

Both Lisa and McNamara conclude explicitly that USTA’s “stated mission is growing tennis” but “their heart lies with creating champions and running the US Open.” The governing body’s incentive structure is not aligned with the foundational grassroots problem, and waiting for USTA to solve it may be the wrong frame. McNamara proposes alternative actors — the Aspen Institute (mission: growing youth sport participation), apparel partners, and new independent organizations willing to pilot the model in a few communities.

7. Team Belonging Is the Retention Mechanism

McNamara returns repeatedly to the observation that “kids love to compete and they love to be on teams.” She envisions children arriving to play tennis in team jerseys, competing against another town’s team on Saturday, generating the social belonging and weekly anticipation that soccer and basketball have built their youth participation models on. This team identity mechanism is largely absent from how introductory tennis is currently delivered.

Actionable Advice for Families

• Parents interested in growing local tennis access should approach their town’s park-and-rec department directly — not wait for USTA — and advocate for a tennis program modeled on youth soccer structure (weekly practice + weekly game, team format, low cost)
• Families with young children (ages 6–10) should evaluate youth sports programs by the four criteria McNamara outlines: local access, low cost, early competition, team element — and choose accordingly to instill love of sport before specialization pressure arrives
• Tennis parents with coaching experience should consider running park-and-rec level programs themselves as a community contribution; the demand exists, the infrastructure gap is the real barrier
• Engage organizations like the ITA, Aspen Institute, or even local college tennis programs as potential infrastructure partners for community-level tennis development
• When shopping for introductory tennis programs for young children, prioritize programs that offer competition and team formats over pure skills clinics

INTENNSE Relevance

• Community engagement: McNamara’s analysis directly maps onto INTENNSE’s potential role in the Atlanta market and across its 10 team cities — a professional team tennis league is one of the few entities with the brand, resources, and tennis credibility to sponsor or seed community-level park-and-rec programs that follow her proposed model
• Format validation: McNamara’s core argument — that team competition and belonging are the retention mechanisms youth sports cannot do without — is precisely what INTENNSE’s team format provides at the professional level, validating the league’s structural choices
• Pipeline development: The grassroots participation gap McNamara describes is also INTENNSE’s pipeline problem — if tennis fails to retain young players, the talent pool and the fan base for a professional league thin simultaneously; community-level investment at the youth level is directly connected to league viability
• Brand positioning: INTENNSE could position itself as the organization McNamara says doesn’t exist yet — one whose heart actually lies with growing tennis participation, not just producing champions or running prestige events
• Broadcast and fan base: McNamara’s vision of children playing in team jerseys, competing weekly, developing team loyalty — mirrors the fan attachment model that professional team sports rely on; INTENNSE could deliberately build this pathway from youth team programs into INTENNSE fandom
• Infrastructure model: The “franchise + centralized infrastructure” model McNamara proposes (insurance, marketing, curriculum, local operators) is directly applicable to how INTENNSE could structure junior affiliate programs or community tennis initiatives across its 10 markets

Notable Quotes

“I pulled into [the school] and I could not believe the number of parents and young children and volunteer coaches — we couldn’t even find a parking space. And I kept finding myself looking up at the tennis courts thinking, they were empty.”

“Soccer was $100 for one practice, one game, and a uniform. This was $1,000 for one practice. No equipment, no uniform, no competition.”

“I don’t think there’s a lack of interest from parents in getting their kids to play tennis. I just don’t think that we have the model right now where kids can easily get into the sport and then it is set up for them to want to come back.”

“Kids love to compete and they love to be on teams. Give these kids their team jersey and they show up on Saturday to play tennis as well as soccer — I know what my kids love and I don’t think they’re unique.”

“USTA’s stated mission is growing tennis, but I don’t really think that’s where their heart lies. I think their heart lies with creating champions and running the US Open.”