Nonprofit Organization ‘Breakpoint’ Jumps into JTT Action

Gildehaus believes it’s just the beginning for Breakpoint, which narrowly missed out on also featuring a 14U Junior Team Tennis squad this summer. Gildehaus said the nonprofit is considering development of its own league among its approximately 10 sites, and is working with Toni McDonald — USTA St. Louis JTT coordinator — to figure out the logistics of such an undertaking.

“Transportation and traveling to some of the clubs for the JTT program can be an issue,” Gildehaus said. “It would be a really neat thing to have Mathews-Dickey play Gene Slay’s Girls’ & Boys’ Club. A lot of these programs can help us provide transportation for their sites to go and play other team sites. It would get a lot of our kids in our programs learning about match play, learning to keep score.”

A landmark moment occurred June 5 when Breakpoint’s 18U team hosted Vetta Concord at the three-court Mathews-Dickey Boys & Girls Club. The match was the first JTT contest in Breakpoint’s existence and is believed to be the first-ever Junior Team Tennis match to be played at Mathews-Dickey.

"The kids were really proud and excited to host at their home court," Gildehaus said. "This is where many of the kids play on a regular basis. We have a big tennis academy there Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to noon all summer. This is a nice location. USTA Missouri Valley invested in the resurfacing project there, and others have contributed as well. We want to feature them."

“As part of our mission, we are trying to help parents from the county visit the city. Tennis should be played in the city just like the county. It’s a good way of building bridges to get folks from different locations to come together. We have to uphold the core value of diversity and inclusion the USTA Foundation, USTA Missouri Valley and USTA St. Louis espouses. This is our chance to uphold diversity and inclusion.”

Gildehaus said the opening match went well and matches have continued to go well since then, including another home contest for the 18U Silver squad against CCRC. He hopes word will spread that Mathews-Dickey is “an awesome facility.”

“Those courts are starting to serve a great number of kids in the area,” Gildehaus said. “It’s a great opportunity to grow tennis in that area and expose kids to a sport they really haven’t had the opportunity to play for the most part. It’s been several decades since anyone has tried to do something big in the city. It’s a great place opened by Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater St. Louis.”

Getting JTT off the ground is another success story in a growing line of them for Breakpoint Tennis & Life Skills Academy, a subsidiary organization of the Triple A Youth Foundation. Breakpoint is on track to serve nearly 250 kids this summer. Throughout the course of the year with its several exposure, outreach, in-school and after-school programs, Breakpoint will impact upwards of 500 children in the city and county.

Gildehaus left his job at University of Missouri-St. Louis eight months ago to become the organization’s first full-time paid employee. Breakpoint’s team of 12 regular coaches has run seven-day-a-week programming year-round the past two years. The organization has cultivated a new partnership with Nine PBS’s “Drawn In” series as part of its five tennis and reading camps.

Breakpoint runs programming at St. Louis Catholic Academy, Maplewood Richmond Heights Elementary School and Sigel Elementary School with the hope of starting a program at McKinley Classical Leadership Middle School — just down the street from Sigel — imminently. The nonprofit runs a weekend high-performance clinic indoors at Frontenac Racquet Club year-round.

Breakpoint recently began a new program at Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club’s two-court facility. One of Breakpoint’s coaches is starting the all-new tennis team at Jennings High School and its two courts. Gildehaus said Breakpoint hopes to piggyback off that by developing elementary and middle school programs that feed players into the high school squad.

“Our mentality is we try to go where the kids are rather than asking them to come to us,” Gildehaus said. “What’s cool is we’re starting to see kids get to a level where they can now potentially get on the path to playing USTA Level 7 or Level 6 tournaments. JTT is the first step for those kids to see where they can take their tennis. To gauge what their tennis goals are and just be a part of something bigger.”

Breakpoint Tennis & Life Skills Academy was the recipient of the 2021 USTA Missouri Valley Outstanding Community Tennis Association Award. To learn more about the nonprofit and its mission, click here. To reach out to the organization, click here. To read a previous article about Breakpoint published by USTA St. Louis, click here.