PITTSFIELD — Roy Kozupsky grew up in a middle-class family where his passion for tennis was fostered at an early age. His mother, who worked as a nurse, was committed to schlepping him across Long Island during the summer in search of tennis courts, programs, and coaches who could further his ardent interest in the sport. “For me, tennis was an enormous ticket in life,” Kozupsky told The Edge in a recent interview, one that helped pave his way through college, law school, and beyond. Kozupsky’s passion has hardly dwindled in the ensuing decades, as evidenced by the Stockbridge resident’s newest moonshot: to bring high-end tennis coaching to kids in the Berkshires.
“Tennis for me was an incredible bridge — a big set of legs — to get through life; it [has] afforded me so much,” said the accomplished lawyer, philanthropist, and now president and executive director of Berkshire Moonball Tennis Academy (BMTA), a nonprofit aimed at weaving sports, philanthropy, and kids together in one fell swoop.
The idea came to Kozupsky and his wife Leslie (the organization’s treasurer) as they drove through the Berkshires noting an abundance of tennis courts and a dearth of young players using them. Pittsfield, in particular, has ”top notch courts [that are] completely underused [despite the] City [doing] a great job maintaining them,” he pointed out. This observation led to the launch of last summer’s pilot program — underwritten by a pair of families and offered for free — aimed at local kids looking to get a leg up on their tennis game. The response was “lights out” and Kozupsky didn’t have enough coaches to support the interest. This summer, Berkshire Moonball Tennis Academy is offering a three-week program, on the courts at Pittsfield’s Herberg Middle School, and is looking for participants.
“Sports are a fundamental component in the maturation of a child,” said Kozupsky, whose own sports-fueled journey led him to the Israel Tennis Centers (ITC), a highly respected non-profit organization devoted to using tennis as a means to improve the lives of children, where he worked as a coach before heading to law school. There he witnessed what he calls “tennis as a social bridge” for children of all nationalities who came together to learn the sport for free. Now, as a retiree, he is looking to pay it forward to kids in rural parts of the Berkshires who might not otherwise know where to avail themselves of top-notch instruction.
“This is where we want to come back to — [at a] reflective point in life — [as] we love the community and are both very involved,” Kozupsky said of his hunch that, if he can get the word out, local children will be able to gain skills that go beyond how to hold a tennis racquet. “[This opportunity] could touch a wide body of children,” he said, adding “that’s what we’re here for.”
Kozupsky has assembled a cohort of top-notch coaches, in conjunction with Williams College, to offer three weeks of instruction from July 19–August 6, Mondays through Fridays, from 3-6 p.m. With a handful of courts and a handful of hours each day, the program will provide the innovation needed to “tap into [a] core group of children” looking to learn tennis or elevate their skills, have fun in a focused program, and be part of a group contributing to the social-emotional learning of all children. Registration is open to girls and boys ages 7–15, from beginners through advanced players.
Kozupsky’s extensive research on the topic revealed the deep correlation between kids’ attendance at such programs and the competency of its coaches. “[It’s] a trust factor,” he said, pointing to the words of the late, great American tennis player Arthur Ashe, who often spoke on children and the sport of tennis: “Our idea is to use tennis as a way to gain and hold the attention of young people so that we can teach them about matters more important than tennis.”
Kozupsky is optimistic. “When building something, there are always those ‘beautiful obstacles,’” he said in a nod to the famous line by Dr. Seuss who, when challenged to pen a children’s book with fewer than 225 distinct words from a first-grader’s vocabulary, thought it impossible. Last year, some participants walked, others carpooled. “They figured it out,” Kozupsky said, citing issues of transportation being paramount in our sprawling, largely rural area. His choice of Pittsfield was a “strategic decision” because of its central location.
The program’s tuition is $525 for three weeks of dedicated instruction, but scholarships are available. Meanwhile, Kozupsky is determined to do something that’s not easy to do: make a name for Berkshire Moonball in a region already saturated with nonprofits. As for his means of differentiating? The sport itself is merely a baseline: “We are after far bigger things than how to hit a tennis ball.”
