2024 USTA Eastern Tennis Woman of the Year: Sandy Hoffman

Sandy Hoffman, of Harrison, N.Y., has been named USTA Eastern’s 2024 Tennis Woman of the Year for connecting thousands upon thousands of individuals in the Westchester/Rockland area to local tennis programming. 

“My basic guiding principle has always been to make an impact on lives through tennis,” she says.

Hoffman herself has first-hand knowledge of the impact the game can make. She discovered the sport when she was just 11 years old through a local parks and recreation program.

“I remember I went into a store with my dad and got my first wooden Spalding racquet with a press,” she recalls now.

“What I loved about the program was that it brought together so many people from all different walks of life,” she says. “We were all very different, and we formed a great camaraderie. We created wonderful memories for everyone.”

Even as she continued to work with USTA Leagues, Hoffman also started volunteering more frequently with USTA Eastern in other areas throughout the 1990s. She joined the organization’s Adult Tennis Council in 1990 and was one of the first clinicians to help out Jenny Schnitzer, the future executive director who joined the Eastern team to help bring tennis into schools. Hoffman assisted as Schnitzer ran clinics for kids at schools in the Westchester area and helped connect the young staffer to other local community tennis leaders interested in growing the game. Forging connections was always one of Hoffman’s greatest strengths. Indeed, she introduced 2022 Tennis Woman of the Year Janet Lefkowitz to Brenda Spyer; in 1992, Lefkowitz and Spyer co-founded HERO, Inc., a hugely successful non-profit organization that has introduced thousands upon thousands of people with disabilities to tennis over the last 30 years.

Eventually, given her effectiveness in bringing different people within the sport together—and the fact that “I basically already knew everybody [involved in tennis in the region],” she notes with a laugh—USTA Eastern approached Hoffman about working with the section on a full-time basis. During her two decades as a staff member with the organization—first as a regional community director and then as a tennis service representative—Hoffman helped facilitate a multitude of partnerships between local tennis providers and school districts, paving the way for thousands of students to engage with the sport as a part of their regular curriculum and beyond.

“When I heard about [what the USTA could do] for schools [like send free equipment], I said, ‘I'm going to write letters to all the clubs and schools and principals,’” she recalls. ‘I wrote this letter explaining all the wonderful things we could do. And I thought, ‘Oh, my phone's going to be ringing off the hook!’ And nothing happened. I think people thought, ‘Oh, yeah, right, they're not going to do that!’ So I just rolled up my sleeves and I started trying to identify successful community programs that did not offer tennis. I found parks and rec programs, schools, clubs, boys and girls clubs. My basic philosophy was to create a community circle and to saturate an area with tennis.”

“Ultimately what I’ve done is connect extraordinary people,” she explains. “Programs are only as good as the people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and make it happen.”

In addition to her work with schools, Hoffman also bolstered parks programming throughout the region during her tenure as a staff member. Parks programs are particularly important to her, and remain important to her to this very day, considering her own origins in the sport. In 2017, for example, she helped the Port Chester Parks and Recreation Department revitalize its tennis operation by coordinating with the local high school to open their courts during the summer. The structured programs Hoffman helped develop attracted nearly 200 participants that year. Prior to this collaboration, Port Chester residents had to look elsewhere for play opportunities, as there were no public courts in the area.