COMMUNITY AREA #40: Washington Park—XS Tennis

Kamau Murray is the founder and executive director of XS Tennis and Education Foundation, a free after-school program that provides thousands of Chicago Public School students from underserved communities access to tutoring, tennis programs, and more.

Since its founding, XS Tennis has seen a 100% college acceptance rate among its graduating seniors, but Murray has even bigger plans: He wants to triple the amount of kids XS Tennis sends to college in the upcoming year.

Watch to learn more about Kamau Murray and his team’s mission with XS Tennis, then take a look back at Murray’s conversation with us at Chicago Ideas Week 2017, where he talks about his approach to success and coaching, being a Black man playing tennis, and his conversations with Billie Jean King.

ACT TODAY: Learn more about XS Tennis, and get involved here.

The 77 Project is a storytelling and media project presented in partnership with Xfinity with additional support from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to help redefine the narrative of our neighborhoods from the inside out. We’ll spend the remainder of 2018 shining a light on organizations and individuals in each of the 77 community areas of Chicago who are making a positive impact. Know someone we should speak with? Recommend them here.