As part of last season’s 40th anniversary celebration, the Executive Committee approved a new civic-minded focus to our charter. This charter expansion was geared to harnessing the collective desire of giving-back from our GOBs members, and more directly supporting organizations whose mission shares our passion for the sport of tennis. We selected Norwalk/Stamford Grassroots Tennis & Education (Grassroots) as an organization worthy of our focus and support.
Grassroots is a youth development nonprofit organization which helps youth build strength of character and a foundation for success on the tennis court, in the classroom, and in life. The organization was founded by a long-time GOBs member, Art Goldblatt, who passed away on October 2, 2021. Both Roy Anderson and John Schmidt have been involved with the organization as members of the Grassroots Advisory Board over the past several years, and Jay Bennett has been involved in practice sessions with their youth.
As a tribute to both Art and Grassroots’ efforts, the GOBs launched The Inaugural Arthur J. Goldblatt Memorial Tournament last year. We will co-host with Grassroots The 2nd Annual Arthur J. Goldblatt Memorial Tournament on Thursday, August 15th at Tokeneke Club from 8:30AM to 12:30PM. A key goal of the Tournament is to provide the Grassroots youth an opportunity to further develop their life skills by teaming-up and interacting with a GOBs member, exposing them to a club environment, and potentially inspiring them in a way that could influence their future direction.
As last year, there will be 12 GOBs members who will pair with a Grassroots youth forming 12 doubles teams. The teams will play in a round-robin format and the two teams who compile the most points in that format will play in the Championship round. After the tournament, the GOBs organization will treat the youth and their coaches to a BBQ buffet lunch. We invite all our GOBs members to come out and support those of us who participate in the Tournament, and/or attend lunch as Tokeneke Club will accept inter-club billing.
GOBs’ subsidy for the youth and coaches of Grassroots attending the luncheon comes out of our Treasury, however, if any individual member would like to donate to Grassroots directly you can do so in one of two ways:
Electronic Donation: Go to https://www.grassrootste.org/donate. You can complete the donation form and make sure you indicate that you are associated with the GOBs.
Mail-in Donation: You can send a check payable to Grassroots to:
Norwalk/Stamford Grassroots Tennis & Education
Donations Department
11 Ingalls Ave
Norwalk, CT 06854
In addition to the Tournament, during this past Spring, Jay Bennett headed-up a GOBs Mentoring Program with Grassroots as our members participated as court captains in their practice sessions. Jay was joined by Roy Anderson, John Schmidt, Robin Hogen, Mike Boscaino, Bill Seward, and Huck Hough for the Program’s introductory year. We hope to expand our involvement in this Program for next year.
Over the next 30 days, there will be a banner posted to the landing page of our website with the key points regarding the Tournament. The information contained on the banner is meant to remind our members of the event, and provide any representatives from the Press with pertinent information about the event and furnish contact details.
As always, if there are any questions, please forward them to me.
Best,
Jim