Serena Williams Opens Second School in Kenya

Serena Williams, the world's #1 womens tennis player, made a whirlwind 3-day trip to Kenya in late February. The trip included the opening of the Serena Williams Wee Secondary School, the second such school in her name in that African nation. The school is located in the remote village of Wee, east of Nairobi. This is the second school she’s opened in Kenya with help from computer giant Hewlett Packard. Serena opened her first school in 2008. Oprah, you're lagging.


Just a couple months ago Serena was all over the news for her rant against a line judge in a tennis match and the media was calling for her head. But where is the main stream media when not only Serena Williams, but any athelete does anything positive?

The tiny village of Wee was a beehive of activity as Serena and her entourage arrived in aboard helicopters to preside over the grand opening. Hundreds of school children and their parents turned out to receive the celebrated star player which they only hear about in the media. The greatest moment of the event came when Serena was decorated as an Akamba woman amid song and dance.

Wee students, having heard of a popular joke that Serena’s roots are in Western Kenya due to her imposing physique, impressed the visitor with a rendition of popular songs from the region like mwana wa mama apepetanga (mama’s girl is a star dancer). The children sang: “Serena we like you, Serena we love you, Serena come dance with us,” and Serena acknowledged by waving back with a smile.

For hundreds of Wee residents, the presence of helicopters attracted their attention much more than did the tennis star as they gathered around the machines they only see flying above the hilly region.

Serena’s school has a special class for deaf students, the first of its kind in the region.

Serena also met with the Prime Minister and Vice President of Kenya and conducted a tennis clinic with the children. And being that Serena was recovering from the flu, her appearance was all the more impressive.

Young Tennis Sisters II

Two young Black sisters from southern California and budding tennis stars; sounds familiar. No they are not the William sisters. They are Elizabeth and Mary Profit, but they share many of the athletic qualities that have made Venus and Serena the most dominant sisters in tennis history.

Elizabeth is 13 years old and holds a top ten ranking among 14-year-olds. She is already defeating top-ranked players in the 18-year-old division. Her sister Mary, at 11, is also a top-ranked player and dominating her age group. Mary won her first tournament at the age of 6.

Both girls started playing tennis as infants by hitting balls of socks across their living room. Their mother, Yvonne Profit, recognized their talent and saw it as an opportunity to develop sportsmanship and character and just maybe an opportunity for them earn athletic scholarships at top national universities. So far, they have exceeded her expectations. The Profit sisters grew up in a single-parent household and developed an exemplary work ethic to compensate for a lack of resources. Mom Yvonne, who earned a degree at the University of Michigan, decided to give up her full-time job and move her daughters into an RV to compensate for the expenses of traveling for tournaments. The girls view living in an RV as an inconvenience rather than a hardship. In a sport that more often tends to develop players from affluent backgrounds, Elizabeth and Mary have already beaten overwhelming odds and endured the kind of adversity that too often ends in defeat.



The Profit sisters may be on a path toward a professional tennis career, but Elizabeth's story off the court is just as compelling. She has juvenile diabetes and has been living with the disease since the age of 2, when her body stopped producing insulin. Elizabeth learned how to test her blood sugar levels before the age of 3 and two years later, she began administering insulin injections on her own. She does not use her diabetes as an excuse. Younger sister Mary knows that diabetes can be debilitating and a matter of life and death, so she constantly watches over her older sister.

For the past ten years the Profits have been unable to obtain private health insurance on the open market because diabetes is considered a pre-existing medical condition. Elizabeth used to rely on a large insulin pump to make it through the day, but now she wears a small patch that releases insulin. Despite the inconvenience of checking her blood sugar level a dozen times a day, Elizabeth has not let diabetes deter her from achieving her goals. At 17 she plans to be playing in at least the quarter-finals of the U.S. Open and eventually winning grand slams and obtaining the No. 1 ranking.

Next year Elizabeth plans turning pro and enter the women's professional tour, at the same age that Serena and Venus Williams turned pro.

Serena Williams Strolls to Australian Title: Regains No. 1 Ranking

Serena Williams won her fourth Australian Open with an easy win in only 59 minutes.
She joined the double-digit club by winning her 10th grand slam event and played terrific tennis over the past two week tournament. Serena continued her streak of winning the Australian Open in odd-numbered years, after triumphs in 2003, 2005 and 2007. This year Serena beat Russia's Dinara Safina 6-0, 6-3. .

The win also returned Serena to the top of the ranking computer as the number one woman tennis player in the world. She is now the reigning U.S. Open and Australian Open ladies singles champion, placing her halfway to doing another 'Serena Slam' – holding all four major championships at the same time but not winning them over a calendar year. She has won 20 Grand Slam titles: ten in singles, eight in women's doubles, and two in mixed doubles. She also has won two Olympic gold medals in women's doubles. The next slam is the French Open, which she last won in 2002 by defeating her sister Venus.

It seems that the Williams sisters are back at the top. A Williams girl has won the last three slams, as Venus won at Wimbledon last summer. Serena and Venus also won the Australian Open doubles championship.

She is the most recent player, male or female, to have held all four Grand Slam singles titles simultaneously. Serena Williams has won more career prize money than any other woman, in any sport and has held the No. 1 ranking on three previous occasions.

All-Williams Wimbledon Final Raises TV Ratings

The Williams sisters’ duel drew the highest preliminary television ratings for a women’s Wimbledon final in three years. Venus Williams’ straight-set victory over younger sister Serena on Saturday earned a 3.4 overnight rating and a 10 share on NBC, the network said Sunday. That’s up 21 percent from the 2.8/8 for last year’s meeting between Venus and Marion Bartoli. It’s the best rating since a 4.0/12 in 2005 for the match between Venus and Lindsay Davenport. Venus Williams has won the Wimbledon championship five times earning the nickname Venus Wimbledon.

The rating is the percentage watching a program among homes with televisions, and the share is the percentage tuned into the broadcast among those households with TVs on at the time. Overnight ratings measure the country’s largest markets.

When Venus won her second match point of the day at Wimbledon, even little sister Serena could celebrate. About 3 1/2 hours after Venus beat Serena to win the women’s singles title, the sisters paired up to win their seventh Grand Slam doubles title, beating Lisa Raymond of the United States and Samantha Stosur of Australia 6-2, 6-2.

The victory improved Venus and Serena to 7-0 in Grand Slam doubles finals, and gave them their third doubles title at All England Club. “We’ve both worked really hard this year, and I think the results showed here, both in the singles and the doubles,” Venus said after winning the Wimbledon singles title for the fifth time.
This was third all-in-the-family Wimbledon singles final.

The sisters last won the doubles title at Wimbledon in 2002, the first of two straight years in which Serena had beaten Venus in the singles final. On Saturday, Venus beat Serena 7-5, 6-4 on Center Court before the pair returned to the same stadium for yet another victorious Grand Slam final.

In the doubles match, Venus and Serena broke their opponents twice in each set, showing little emotion throughout and only whispering tactics to each other with their hands covering their mouths. Venus, with tape near her right knee, served out to win each set. When Venus’ backhand lob sailed high into the darkening sky in the final game, both Stosur and Raymond watched the ball land on the baseline for the final point of the match.

Serena, standing near the net with her racket at the ready, didn’t even know if the ball landed in. Once she realized she, too, claimed a Grand Slam title of the 2008 tournament, she raised her arms in celebration and hugged her older sister.
The Williams sisters have entered 34 tournaments as a team and won 11 titles, including the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Venus first won both singles and doubles titles at Wimbledon in 2000, and Serena matched that in 2002.

Including the prize money awarded to the singles champion and runner-up, along with what they earned for the doubles championship, the Williams family netted more than $2.5 million Saturday.