To host a free tennis clinic for local youth, 16-year-old Isabella Tripathi fundraised the old-fashioned way — by knocking on doors in her Casa Linda Forest neighborhood.
At first, Isabella was nervous approaching people this way, but once she got used to it, her passion replaced those anxious feelings.
“I saw that fire in her eyes,” her father Bob Tripathi says. “Then around 6 [p.m.] or something, I was like, ‘Oh, are you going to come back home?’ because she was in the neighborhood. She’s like, ‘Three more houses, three more houses.’”
Isabella could have just put up flyers about her fundraiser to host Smash IT Tennis – Rally for Hope, which makes tennis accessible to local children, in Kroger or another public place. But she saw the benefit of being able to look people in the eye and tell her story.
“It’s another thing if people really hear the passion in my voice when I speak about it,” she says. “I’m a tennis player, and this cause really is dear to me just because of all the support I’ve received, so I think for people to really hear that and be aware of that when I speak to them is really important. And it would drive them to support even more.”
Her method worked. She raised more than $2,000 to buy equipment for the free clinic.
Tripathi introduced his daughter, who is currently homeschooled, to tennis when she was young. She started playing around 9 years old and was entering tournaments by the age of 12. Isabella says tennis is an outlet for her to express herself, and she has learned problem-solving and decision-making skills through the sport.
“I love it, and I couldn’t imagine my life without it,” she says.
Isabella knows that she is able to play tennis thanks to the support from her family and her coaches. But not all children have that.
“I really felt the desire and the want to give back to others in the way that I’ve been helped a lot,” she says. “I kind of had the idea, like, what could I do to help kids who maybe weren’t afforded the same opportunities that I was with the support system that I’m so grateful to have.”
Thus, Smash IT Tennis – Rally for Hope was born.
The name even has a few Easter eggs. The “IT” is capitalized in reference to Isabella’s initials, and “rally” is the term for a sequence of back-and-forth shots between tennis players until a point is scored.
More than 30 children ages 5 to 15, most of whom had never played before, showed up to her free half-day clinic in December at the Lakeland Hills Park tennis courts. The money she raised paid for equipment (rackets and balls), goodie bags, snacks and lunch for the participants. The children were split into groups based on their age, and Isabella and her friends (who also helped her organize the clinic) led them through warm-ups and taught tennis basics. The children practiced hitting the balls with their rackets and played a game related to that skill. Isabella and her team also raffled off some of the rackets for the participants to take home.
Isabella garnered support for her clinic from Dallas Park and Recreation Department, Dallas ISD and the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas, which collectively helped at the event and spread the word beforehand.
“It was a really fun event, getting to help all the kids, cheer them on and watch them make friends there, too, and learn,” Isabella says. “It was such a great thing to witness and be part of.”
Another rewarding part of the event was getting to meet with parents of the participating children.
“They were really grateful for the event and to be able to give the kids an opportunity to pick up a racket,” Isabella says. “I really wanted to connect to them. My mom is Chilean, so I speak Spanish, and a lot of the kids were of Hispanic descent, so I was speaking Spanish to the parents as well, and it was a great community thing. And I learned a lot about being a leader off the court and just giving back to the community.”
Now, Isabella is planning another free tennis clinic for March during spring break, this time held at Ferguson Park. The goal is to host it quarterly and find new places for it in Dallas instead of sticking to one location and group of children.
As Isabella cheered on the children at the clinic, her father had been rooting for her while she worked to organize the event and was there to help on the day of.
“It was beautiful,” Tripathi says of watching Isabella take charge at the event. “Obviously, I choked up. I had tears in my eyes to see this happening and so many kids, everyone happy. And turns out, it was the most perfect weather day of that whole week. It just worked out. It was heartwarming, and it just fills your heart with bliss, to be honest.”
