Lisa Stone
Founder and host of ParentingAces. Fourteen years, 506 conversations, a body of work no other voice in junior tennis has assembled. Lisa's four solo episodes — annual "deep dives" — are the closest thing the archive has to a state-of-the-game address.
From the four "deep dive" episodes that anchor the archive.
"Most parents listen because they want a roadmap. The deeper reason they stay is that they want to know they're not alone. That's what fourteen years has taught me — the show works because it's the only place a lot of these families ever hear someone else say the quiet part out loud."
"We crossed five hundred episodes this year. I never set out to build an archive — I set out to ask one parent a question and then ask another parent the same question. I think the archive happened because nobody else was asking. That's the part I'm most proud of, and the part I worry won't survive me. So we're building this site."
What Lisa has been asking, all along.
Tell me about the parent you wanted to be
The opening question Lisa returns to more than any other. It's what changes the conversation from a tactical interview into a personal one — usually within two minutes.
What's the version of this story you usually skip?
The Lisa question that has produced the most most-replayed-by-listeners moments. Coaches who say they've never been asked it. Parents who didn't realize they had a version they were skipping.
If you could whisper one thing to a family in year one
The closing question on most parent-role episodes. The answers Lisa has collected here, taken together, are effectively the curriculum the new-to-tennis stage of this archive is built on.
What does this look like in twenty years?
The question Lisa is now asking founders, format reformers, and INTENNSE-network voices. The next decade of the show, in one prompt.
Still recording every Tuesday. Still asking the questions no one else is.
Lisa continues to host ParentingAces from her studio, where she records new episodes every Tuesday. The show has grown from a niche tennis-parent podcast into the most cited spoken archive of junior tennis culture in the United States. Her annual solo episodes — a state-of-the-game in her own voice — are listened to most by other coaches and founders trying to understand where the sport is going.
Her most recent project, this archive site, is the first attempt to make the body of work navigable by stage and theme rather than by chronology. "I wanted families who find us in 2030 to be able to find what they need without listening to fifteen years of it," she says.