The Professional Tennis Registry Women held its coaching summit on September 22 through the 24 for all coaches. At this summit, PTRW hosted an award ceremony, recognizing people and organizations that have been going above and beyond for the grassroots tennis community, especially for women. USTA Florida was honored as PTRW’s Partner of the Year.
“When PTR signed a partnership agreement with USTA Florida, one of the most important focuses was getting more girls playing tennis and more women coaches in the industry,” Milena Vidos, PTR Director of Education and Diversity said. “From day one, USTA Florida was committed to making it happen.”
USTA Florida was named PTRW Partner of the Year.
USTA Florida has been extremely committed to its Women in Tennis initiative. Hosting multiple all-girls camps throughout the entire state where women coaches, speakers, and leaders help young girls feel empowered both on and off the court.
Also, USTA Florida worked with Clarity Writing and Research to conduct a comprehensive study on women in tennis – including a deep review of existing efforts and research – to identify issues and assert how we can make meaningful change. Those results are coming later in 2023.
On top of that, USTA Florida has hosted a handful of women speaker trainings, all women coaching trainings and much more. Many of these events have been in collaboration with PTRW.
USTA Florida with the help of PTRW has held many women and girl empowering events.
“Executive Director, Laura Bowen and Past President, Dana Andrews as well as the entire USTA FL staff have been very supportive on PTRW initiatives,” Vidos added. “We have partnered up in different events and initiatives such as the PTRW Summit, all-girls camp and women speaker training.”
Accepting the award on behalf of USTA Florida, was Past President and community leader, Dana Andrews. “Our partnership with PTRW has been invaluable to deliberately address the needs of not just recruiting more coaches, but also more women in coaching,” Andrews said. “We are learning to have girls engaged in our sport, they have to and want to see themselves in the sport and in leadership roles.”
USTA Florida and PTRW are committed to continuing this partnership for the years to come and are thrilled that both the organization’s and PTRW’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are aligned in this direction.
