Soon, Norwood will be the city’s hub for all things tennis, thanks to a new facility aimed at getting people into the sport regardless of their economic status.
On Oct. 28, the Cincinnati Tennis Foundation broke ground on the First Serve Tennis and Education Center, a $10 million year-round campus in Norwood at 1920 Tennessee Avenue. The facility will be completed in fall 2027.
The new facility will feature indoor tennis and pickleball courts, classrooms, a community hub, locker rooms and fully accessible facilities. Once open, it will add 800 after-school program hours each year, deliver academic support, mentoring, nutrition and life-skills programming to 50 or more youth daily, and double the number of youth and individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities the Cincinnati Tennis Foundation serves annually.
The center addresses a widening opportunity gap. According to a release from the Tennis Foundation, 75.1 % of youth in local households earning less than $25,000 are not participating in organized sports. Children from higher-income families are more than 20% more likely to play a sport than children from lower-income households. The First Serve Tennis and Education Center is designed to remove cost, transportation and ability as barriers to participation.
“Every number in our program report starts with a kid who walked onto a court for the first time and decided to stay,” said Matthew Dektas, CEO of the Cincinnati Tennis Foundation, in a statement. “This building is how we keep them. It gives our players a year-round home, a classroom, a meal and a mentor, and it gives this region a permanent place where opportunity is the whole point.”
The Cincinnati Tennis Foundation served 4,715 athletes in 2025 across more than 30 community sites. Its Cincy Scholars program enrolled 382 students who posted a 17% increase in reading comprehension over seven summer weeks, measured against average national summer learning losses of 20 to 30%.
The Foundation also served 122 wheelchair and adaptive athletes, whose teams finished number two in the United States in wheelchair tennis and number one in ParaStanding tennis, and sent 10 seniors on to collegiate tennis.
First Serve Community Fund has committed $3.5 million to the project to secure naming rights to the facility.
“This project represents what can happen when organizations share a belief that every young person deserves access to opportunity,” Dektas said. “First Serve Community Fund stepped forward with an extraordinary commitment and a shared vision for what this center can mean for generations of young people. Their leadership gave this vision tremendous momentum, and we are proud that the First Serve name will welcome every child and family who walks through these doors.”
For more information, visit the Cincinnati Tennis Foundation’s official website.
