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EMPIRE TENNIS ACADEMY
2024 SUMMER NEWSLETTER
Hello to the Empire Tennis Academy family! Our Fall 1 Semester is well underway and since our last newsletter, we have held several events that we wanted to highlight. Please scroll down to view images and recaps from several of the events we have hosted including our Adult Singles League, Junior Singles League, Spring and Summer Invitationals, our third summer of Pickleball Programming, Summer Academy, UTR Specialty Clinics, Junior Team Tennis, the 2024 Tennis Saves Junior Grand Prix, and our High School Senior Dinner Send off. We hope you all enjoy, and thank you for making Empire such a special community!
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Empire Tennis Academy Welcomes Newest Family Member
Ashe Speirs
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We would like to officially introduce the newest member to our Empire Tennis Academy Family, Ashe Silver Speirs. Ashe was brought into the world on April 17th, 2024. Congratulations to Jason and Maria Speirs, along with big brother Jeter, on the newest addition to the Speirs Family and the Empire Tennis Academy Family. | |
Empire Tennis Academy @ The 2024 Tennis Hall of Fame Induction | |
On Saturday, June 8th, several recipients from the Greater Rochester Community were inducted into the Rochester Tennis Hall of Fame. The ceremony took place at the Golisano Institute. We wanted to sincerely congratulate all of this year's recipients for their service to the tennis community and were very happy to be in attendance. Among those attending included Grand Slam Champion Monica Seles and Tom Golisano. It was great to see several colleagues and peers who are currently or previously involved in the tennis community. | |
2024 Annual Senior Dinner @ 110 Grill | |
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It's always bittersweet to send off our High School Seniors who graduate and move onto their future endeavors. On Saturday, June 15th, we hosted our annual send-off dinner for graduating seniors along with their families at 110 Grill. It is always wonderful to reminisce about our juniors time in the program and commemorate the time they spent with us at Empire Tennis Academy developing not just their tennis, but the human skills that are necessary to go out into the world and succeed!
Congratulations to the following seniors!
Samaira Bhatia (U Mass Amhest), Eitan Fay (University of Rochester), Stephen Habecker (St. Bonaventure), Nikol Kadesh, Zaina Khan (University of Buffalo), Evan Phillips (Rochester Institute of Technology), Jake Sullivan (Boston College), JJ Whipple (University of Buffalo) and Christian Zeitvogel
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We are super excited to end our seventh season of Adult Single League with our best results yet!! Thanks to your support, and word of mouth, we jumped to 85 registered players and a grand total of 320 matches played between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Thank you everyone for making this the largest singles league in Rochester!!
Congratulations to all of our Playoff winners below and Gill Tsouri for winning the A Flight finals (pic left) over Chris Fisher in straight sets. Gill won himself a complimentary League pass for next summer. The winners of each flight have won themselves a prize. They will receive a separate email reminding them of their winnings. Jake Insley won the B Flight over Samantha Kotz, and Sylvain Della-Torre won the C Flight over Dan Geba. Michael Batek won the D Flight over Jeff Mastin, and Mark Weimer defeated Ben Webb in the E Flight. Jamie Syrett defeated Dayou Yu for the F flight, and Scott Cizenski won over Danny Maffia in the G Flight. Erika Rosenberg won a marathon of a match over Daniel Maira in the H Flight while Qi yang had an easy walkover winning the I Flight and Kevin Klafehn prevailed over Eleanor Chand-Matzke in the J Flight Finals. Congratulations to all the winners!! All of the scores can be viewed online.
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Thank you everyone for joining us this summer in our sophomore season! With your support, we were able to schedule and play 146 verified matches with 51 registered players. Again, I cannot thank our tennis community enough for supporting Tennis Saves, and all our efforts to create affordable and frequent match play opportunities for the WHOLE Rochester tennis community all year round!
Congratulations to Daniel Della-Torre for winning the A Flight Playoff finals in a third set victory over League Leader Justin Kim! Evan Fuller, Henry Alessandria, and William Richardson won the B, C, and D Flights in straight sets respectively. Grant Sienkowski had a walkover to win the E Finals, while Ahmed Jamshed and Dominic Calzetoni won the F & G Flights respectively in straight sets. Congratulations to all our winners and everyone for qualifying. You earned your spot in Playoffs.
Based on the success of the JSL, we are excited to bring back JSL next summer for a third year. Adding the JSL to our yearly calendar gets us super excited to expand opportunities and motivates us to do even more within our community. All though our Fall Series is underway on Sundays at the Harley School, we look forward to our Winter Indoor Match Play on Saturdays at Salmon Creek starting in November. Registration will open shortly online.
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Empire hosted it's annual Spring Invitational over the course of three weekends in the month of June with three separate divisions of match play. Congratulations are extended to Arnob Banik who defeated Srihith Reddy Gorre in the finals 2-4, 4-3, 13-11 on June 8th in the UTR 2-3 Division. Congratulations to Varun Ramaswamy who the UTR 3-4 division, defeating Nanson Chen 4-1,4-1 in the finals. On August 10th, Empire Hosted it's Summer Invitational for players with a UTR range of 3-6. Congratulations to Peter Saulzhauer who defeated his brother Jake Saulzhauer in a close final 4-3, 3-4, 10-8. Thanks to all of the players who came out and competed in our Invitationals! | |
On Saturday June 1, Empire hosted it's Annual Boys H.S. Doubles Invitational Tournament. A total of 12 players joined us for the tournament. Players partnered up with their High School teammates to compete in three matches. Congratulations are extended to both Stephen Habecker and Evan Phillips (Wayne H.S.) who defeated the team of Krishna Rao and Sourish Sou (Pittsford Mendon H.S.) in the finals, 4-2, 2-4, 11-9. Thanks to all of the boys who joined us for some high quality doubles! | |
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2024 PICKLEBALL
This was our third consecutive year hosting Pickleball Programming over the summer time, running both Adult and Junior classes at Empire, Dinkers and Thornell Farm Park! Empire offered group lessons at least 4 times a week in the afternoons & evenings and we had a great mix of players of all levels join in on the fun. We wanted to thank all of our players for joining us over the summer and are very excited to continue to offer Pickleball programming year-round now! Lessons for beginners through intermediate are still available through Empire at Dinkers Pickleball Facility in East Rochester. Check out our website for more info and be on the lookout for upcoming offers as we move into the indoor season.
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On July 19, Empire Tennis Academy partnered with Midtown Athletic Club to host an Orange Ball Junior Team Tennis event. 4 of our players faced off against 4 Midtown players in both singles and doubles action. For many of them, this was their first experience with inter-club competition and, for our players, this was their first time playing matches outside Empire's walls. At the end of the night, Empire came away with a clean sweep, 6-0, although many of the matches came down to the wire. More importantly, all the players on both sides had plenty of fun and demonstrated excellent sportsmanship throughout their matches. We look forward to many more!
| 2024 Adult Game Arranging | |
Over the course of the summer, Empire hosted Adult Game Arranging on both Saturday and Sunday mornings! These organized match play events are absolutely crucial for our adults in our program to practice the skills and tactics they are working on in class, and also get exposure to playing matches, problem solving, and playing against a wide variety of opponents who are both enrolled in our program, as well as against other players who are joining us from outside our program.
Since April 20th, we hosted 245 participants who joined us when the weather was cooperative outdoors, and still have a couple more weeks of Adult Game Arranging on Saturdays on the schedule in October!
Thank you to all of the participants who joined us for our Adult Game Arranging!
| 2024 Summer Academy and UTR Specialty Clinics | Over the summer, we hosted full day Red, Orange and Green Ball daytime programming for juniors. We also hosted UTR Specialty Clinics for yellow ball juniors in the afternoon. This summer was one of our busiest summers yet! Over the course of 10 weeks, our UTR Specialty Clinics, and Matchplay events hosted 81 participants. Our Red, Orange and Green Ball Summer Academy for juniors ages 5-14 hosted 267 participants in our morning, afternoon and full day programming! Thank you to all of the participants who joined us to develop their tennis. We had a great time with you all! |  |  | |
2024 Tennis Saves Junior Grand Prix
It has truly been a pleasure having an inclusive community of players, family members and friends who have joined us throughout the Tennis Saves Junior Grand Prix events over this summer. Many thanks go to the players and supportive families who are not only present to cheer on their kids, but also understand the value of sportsmanship, supporting other players in the process of developing match play experience and also enhancing the players' competitive understanding of the sport with integrity and class through both wins and losses.
We also wanted to give many thanks to all our local partners, Irondequoit, Spencerport, Gates-Chili, Pittsford Mendon, Webster, Victor High Schools, as as well as Midtown Athletic Club and Tennis Club of Rochester for allowing us to use their facilities for these tournaments. Over the course of the summer, The 2024 Tennis Saves Rochester Junior Grand Prix hosted 156 unique players competing in a total of 592 matches in three divisions.
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Congratulations to Santosh Raja who defeated Sourish Sou in the Advanced Division Masters Finals, and Cam Sullivan who defeated Daniel Parks in the Intermediate Division Masters Finals, both held on Sunday 8/25 at Midtown Athletic Club. | |
THANK YOU FOR READING OUR 2024 SUMMER NEWSLETTER! WE LOOK FORWARDS TO A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF UPCOMING EVENTS! | |
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Frank Solome
Empire Tennis Academy
Director of Marketing and Events
Director of U8 Tennis
USPTA Professional
USPTA Pickleball Professional
frank@empiretennisacademy.com
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