Local tennis community to honor East Rome, Berry grad Elaine Hamilton as she retires as USTA Georgia Executive Director

Media release: For more than four decades, Elaine Hamilton served Georgia's tennis community. Greater Rome's tennis community will now honor the Rome native by thanking her for her service.

 

On Tuesday, Hamilton, who has announced that she is retiring as the Executive Director of USTA Georgia, will be honored with a reception starting at 5 p.m. at Coosa Country Club and hosted by Roman Bernard Neal, a member of the Georgia Tennis Hall of Fame and the Rome-Floyd Sports Hall of Fame, and past president of USTA Georgia and USTA Southern.

 

A graduate of East Rome High and Berry College, Hamilton went on to earn a master's degree in education from the University of Georgia and received a doctorate from Georgia State University.

 

As an educator and coach, Hamilton taught in the Rome City Schools system, started the women's intramural program at Piedmont College and started the women's basketball program at Middle Georgia College where she also coached the women's tennis team.

Tennis, however, was where she found her niche.

 

Soon after she picked up her first racket and took lessons from Jack Waters, Hamilton started to enter local tournaments, began playing on a team in the Atlanta Lawn Tennis Association (ALTA) in the mid-1970s and rose to a top-5 ranking in Women's 35 Singles and Doubles in the state.

 

Hamilton, who was a founding member of the Rome Tennis Club and started Adult Team Tennis that eventually became the USTA League program, began to teach the game on a part-time basis at Rome's city courts and at Coosa Country Club, then headed to Atlanta where she taught tennis at Chattahoochee Plantation Club before teaching at Spalding Woods for 13 years.

 

In 1987, Hamilton began what would be a 26-year run with the Georgia Tennis Association and USTA Georgia, becoming the part-time Schools Director and within three years she introduced more than 200,000 children to tennis through the USTA Schools Program.

 

At the same time, Hamilton was also named the Atlanta Junior Team Tennis Coordinator, seeing that program grow from 400 to more than 3,000 players in three years and helped organize the first state championships held in Rome, Atlanta and Columbus.

 

For 11 years starting in 1990, Hamilton became Georgia's first USTA League State Coordinator and during her tenure saw the state emerge as the largest USTA League in the nation and developed the Georgia State League Championships that is the biggest such state event in the country.

 

Hamilton was also the editor of the quarterly newsletter Courtside Notes, promoted to the position of Director of Adult Programs, in 2000 was named the Director of Community Development and in 2006 was named the Executive Director of USTA Georgia.