News & Features

by Colette Lewis, 26 February 2024

Special from Zoo Tennis

When Ryann Cutillo graduated from Wake Forest in 2012, her plans did not include tennis. The former blue chip recruit from New York had competed for the Demon Deacons for four years, but with no interest in pursuing professional tennis, she turned her attention to a career in sales. Yet the tennis connections she had made over the years ended up leading to her "dream job" as the Executive Director of the Johnny Mac Tennis Project in New York City.

Hall of Fame tennis great John McEnroe founded a for-profit tennis academy on New York's Randall's Island in 2010, in partnership with Sportime, an operator of many tennis and fitness clubs in New York. A few years into that venture, McEnroe recognized a need for a non-profit entity, and the 501(c)(3) Johnny Mac Tennis Project was launched.

"Where the academy is located is next to East Harlem and the Bronx, which are some of the most underserved communities, and John wanted to make tennis more accessible in New York," said Cutillo, who is beginning her third year as JMTP's executive director. "We work with over 2,700 kids every single week, from schools in East Harlem and the Bronx, give them free tennis weekly."

Cutillo may not have been working in tennis after graduation, yet she did stay adjacent to it while building the skills she would need in her current role.

"The company I was with sold ad space in all the game day programs for the National Football League, National Hockey League, National Basketball Association and most college teams also," said the 33-year-old Cutillo, who majored in psychology at Wake Forest. "I moved up, I was managing sales teams, was more in the operations side of things and then, right before Covid hit, I was like, you know what, I love my job, but I was there for like eight or nine years and I just really wanted a switch up."

Another position in sales, at online tennis instruction start-up TopCourt, brought her back to the sport, and a business conversation with the CEO of Sportime prompted her to apply for the opening at JMTP.

"I went through the interview process and it seemed a bit too good to be true, kind of like my dream job," said Cutillo, who lives in Manhattan. "Fundraising is similar to sales, but it's just a lot more meaningful, changing kids' lives through the sport that gave me pretty much everything."

Cutillo found it particularly satisfying to reconnect with the tennis community she had been a part of in juniors and college, with the added bonus of contributing to its future.

"I came from a super working class family, so I was a scholarship player myself," Cutillo said of her junior tennis training environment. "The opportunity to give back, to pay it forward after the opportunities I was given in tennis, made this transition very appealing."

While the bulk of those benefiting from the Johnny Mac Tennis Project are the once-a-week participants, Cutillo explained how those who show promise can progress to the John McEnroe Tennis Academy.

"We have what we like to call a pyramid in our programming," Cutillo said. "At the base of the pyramid is our community programs, where we give kids free access to tennis weekly. Then, from there, we provide scholarships into our Excellence program; that's ultimately the bridge program between the community program and the Academy."

The approximately 30 promising players identified each year are enrolled in a weekend program, which provides court time every Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

"Then, from there, we scholarship kids from Excellence into the Academy," Cutillo said. "All these kids are awarded scholarships not only on their tennis abilities and merit, but based on financial need. All of our scholarship players are means-tested, they have to qualify based on financial need. Currently there are 39 full-scholarship players who are supported by JMTP."

Funding these scholarships is a cornerstone of Cutillo's position as executive director.

"We're a very small team, three employees," Cutillo said. "I deal with scholarship families, oversee our programs, deal with the finances and budget. Then, I'll switch gears and plan our next event. We have a comedy night event coming up, which is a 350-person event at a facility in the city, so we're trying to sell tickets, get sponsors. Then, there's general fundraising, reaching out to potential donors, talking about the work we do."

One significant partner is BNP Paribas, the international bank based in France.

"BNP came along a couple of years ago, after developing a relationship with Patrick McEnroe, who is the president of our board, with what they call their young talent teams," said Cutillo, who noted that BNP Paribas has expanded that initiative to several other international academies since their first partnership with JMTP. "As you know, BNP is very invested in the tennis world, and they said we want to underwrite your highest performing players. So they give us funding, direct to the charity, to fully support our top 10 players."

Among those benefitting from BNP's sponsorship have been Sebastian Sec, now a sophomore at Princeton, Thea Rabman, a freshman at North Carolina and Stephanie Yakoff, a freshman at Harvard. All three received qualifying wild cards to the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells in the past two years, with high school junior Christasha McNeil awarded one for next month's women's qualifying.

While appearing on one of tennis's biggest stages is a dream come true for any junior, Cutillo pointed to another scholarship player, Dylan Ortiz, as an embodiment of the life-changing impact the Johnny Mac Tennis Project can have.

"Every year we graduate three, four, up to seven kids from the academy who go on to receive very high level D-I college scholarships," Cutillo said. "But the most meaningful are the three or four kids who came to us from our community programs, started with us in first or second grade. Dylan started playing tennis simply because we had a partnership with his school and he's stayed with us all the way through.

"He went from never having picked up a racquet—he never would have played tennis, because it is completely unaffordable and not prevalent in his neighborhood—to the Academy. He's not going to play at a top D-I school, but he has an opportunity to get a scholarship through tennis, go to a better school because he came through our programs. And he's been in this environment with like-minded kids, who are also playing the sport that he loves."

"Those are the most meaningful cases to me personally. We have had a few so far, with many more to come," Cutillo added. "We've doubled our budget, quadrupled the amount of community programs we're doing in our outreach. When we can get the kids in here and integrate them into the programming, it works. We can change their lives."

About Southern California Tennis Academy

Southern California Tennis Academy is proud to sponsor the Where Are They Now? series of articles at TennisRecruiting.net.

Southern California Tennis Academy: For the Serious-Minded Tennis Player

At SCTA-LosCab, is an all-in-one full-time boarding academy with all amenities onsite at Los Cab Sports Village in Fountain Valley, California. The academy program focuses on overall game development based on use of strengths, personal shot selection built for your game and athletic-based fitness to increase potential and performance. We play 80-100 tournament matches per year within 30 minutes drive from the academy. We also offer short stay, holiday and summer camps.

Connect with Southern California Tennis Academy on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube - or on their website.

Leave a Comment

About Colette Lewis

Colette Lewis has covered topflight U.S. and international junior events as a freelance journalist for over a decade. Her work has appeared in Tennis magazine, the Tennis Championships magazine and the US Open program. Lewis is active on Twitter, and she writes a weekly column right here at TennisRecruiting.net. She was named Junior Tennis Champion for 2016 by Tennis Industry Magazine.

Lewis, based out of Kalamazoo, Michigan, has seen every National Championship final played since 1977, and her work on the tournament's ustaboys.com website led her to establish ZooTennis, where she comments on junior and college tennis daily.