Game Time

Vermont students are learning about tennis — and life — through Kids on the Ball

Approaching the entrance to the gym at Thomas Fleming School in Essex Junction, you could hear that class was in session. Sneakers pounded the wood floor, balls bounced, kids whooped.

Inside, a group of 18 fourth graders were playing a game called “Top Dog.” Four portable tennis nets bisected the gym, creating four miniature courts, each with an adult instructor and a single student — the Top Dog — on one side and a line of young hopefuls on the other. Everyone clutched a tennis racket.

The instructors gently hit balls over the net; one by one, the kids in line took turns swinging at them. If they scored two points in a row, they could switch sides and replace the Top Dog. A lot of the time, the kids’ returns smacked the net, or bounced into another court, or ricocheted off the wall.

No one seemed to mind — least of all the guy in charge, tennis pro Jake Agna.

At 69, Agna was the oldest person in the room, but his black tank top, Lululemon Bermuda shorts and New Balance tennis shoes projected a youthful vigor. He was also projecting his gravelly voice — he started wearing a microphone and speaker to amplify it after a recent throat surgery.

in!” he said excitedly, before lobbing her another and urging her to hit it overhand. “Yes!” he cheered when she smacked it down. The new Top Dog hustled to his side of the court, beaming. “She’s back!” he said. “Let’s go!”

Agna was leading PE class that February day along with three younger coaches from Kids on the Ball, a donation-funded nonprofit Agna started in 2000 to make tennis accessible to all; the group was nearing the end of a two-week residency at the school.

But Kids on the Ball isn’t just about tennis.

WE BELIEVE KIDS LEARN THROUGH PLAY.

“Our mission is to play games,” Agna explained in a phone interview before the class. Kids these days don’t play enough of them, he said. Agna is on a mission to get every child playing games and having fun.

“We believe kids learn through play,” he said. “We see kids deal with their fears, grow and self-discover through play. It’s amazing the changes you see in kids when they start having fun.”

Agna effortlessly swatted balls to his line of fourth graders while keeping up a constant stream of encouraging banter.

“Let’s go!” he cheered, as a girl with long blond hair stepped up. She hit the ball over his head. “That was

The fourth graders at Fleming seemed to be having a blast. They were all bouncing around eagerly, though clearly paying attention. When Agna told them to put their rackets on the ground, they complied.

“Now everybody pick up 11 balls!” he yelled. They immediately scattered.

As her students retrieved stray tennis balls, Fleming physical education teacher Kelly McClintock said this was her second time working with Kids on the Ball. The classes the group leads are her students’ favorite.

“He’s the best,” she said of Agna. “I want him back every year.”

Expanding Access To Tennis

Agna would love to oblige. He knows that most Vermont students have limited exposure to tennis, which has traditionally been an exclusive and expensive sport.

It was big in the community where Agna grew up, though — Yellow Springs, Ohio, home of Antioch College. “Everybody was playing tennis,” he said. “It was like the religion of the town.”

Agna has been evangelizing for it in Vermont since he moved here in 1983, after landing a job as a tennis instructor at a Burlington-area fitness club. A year later, he started coaching the girls’ tennis team at South Burlington High School, which has since won 16 state championships.

In 2000, Agna founded Kids on the Ball to broaden the reach of the sport in Vermont; he got it off the ground by raising money from the tennis community. His first move: offering free summer camps every weekday morning at Roosevelt Park in Burlington’s Old North End. Kids from the neighborhood would show up and play. Partnering with Burlington’s Department of Parks and Recreation, Agna gave the kids rackets and started playing games with them.

The program was a hit. Over the past 23 years, thousands of young people have participated in it. Some of them stuck with the sport, including Kids on the Ball coaches Cody Tran, 20, and Jack Nguyen, 21, both Roosevelt Park alumni. Coach Jasmina Jusufagić started playing for Agna in second grade and was on the SBHS team. After graduating from the University of Vermont in 2020, she went to work with him.

Over the years, Kids on the Ball has launched programs in other states, even building tennis courts in Cuba. But during the pandemic, Agna and his group started focusing closer to home — specifically on

Vermont schools. The social isolation students experienced during years of remote and hybrid schooling intensified a growing youth mental health crisis.

Kids on the Ball doesn’t offer a cure, but its tennis clinics get kids active and interacting with each other and engaged adults. Its coaches

Encouraging All Kids To Participate

Part of Kids on the Ball’s secret sauce: relentless positivity, Jusufagić said. She played several sports growing up and had coaches who were tough on their athletes. Not Agna. “I could always count on good vibes from Jake,” she said.

that he applied to other areas of his life, Jusufagić said. His skills had improved, too. “You could tell he’d spent some time hitting the ball against the wall.”

Jusufagić has lots of stories like that. “It really does make an impact,” she said.

Learning To Win And Lose

take a nontraditional approach that prioritizes social-emotional learning. Rather than giving lots of instruction, coaches facilitate games and encourage kids to ask questions. And smacking tennis balls can be a healthy way of working out anger and frustration.

Kids on the Ball now visits 25 Vermont schools every year, in addition to running afterschool programs in Burlington. The group’s coaches work with more than 150 kids a day — nearly 1,000 each week. Agna proudly pointed out that in two years, they’ve never missed a single school day.

Through its fundraising efforts, Kids on the Ball is able to offer these sessions to schools for free, equipment and all.

She’s seen how his upbeat approach draws kids in. She offered an example: During a clinic at Otter Valley Union Middle and High School in Brandon a year ago, one teen sat out. Agna walked up to him and invited the young man to be his partner in a game. He got up and played.

“Afterwards, the teacher told us, ‘That kid hasn’t participated in my class in four years,’” she recalled. At the end of their residency at Otter Valley, the student asked Agna for his own racket, and they gave him one.

When Kids on the Ball returned this year, they encountered the young man again, but this time he was in the front of the group with his peers, contributing to the conversation. The tennis games and support helped him find something within himself

At the end of the class at Fleming, Agna asked the kids to put down their rackets and huddle up. “I want to thank you for going fast when you needed to,” he said. “You guys got a good class.”

Afterward, one of the students approached Agna. “Did you have a good day?” the coach asked. “Yeah, I did,” the boy answered, holding out his fist for a fist bump.

When he walked away, Agna explained that he had partnered with that young man earlier, and they’d played a game. Agna pointed out that games set up crises for players, forcing them to act, to confront a situation where they might win or might lose. Doing that over and over again teaches them to live with either outcome.

“It helps their whole life,” he said. 

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Not long after April’s Maple started producing syrup in Canaan in 2013, owner April Lemay got a call from her mother.

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The café is one of several faces of the