Andre Agassi Continues His Legacy

For many, a 21 year tennis career, with 68 career titles, including championships at every Grand Slam event, would be legacy enough.  Not for Andre Agassi.  Agassi has taken the fame and financial benefits of his stellar tennis career and leveraged it into legacy of philanthropy.

His most recent project, the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, continues a history of using his talents and resources to help children.  In 1994, Agassi founded the Andre Agassi Foundation which has been responsible for sponsoring a Boys and Girls Club, funding a facility that accomodates developmentally delayed or handicapped children and children quarantined for infectious diseases and helping to build classrooms for Child Haven, a residential facility for abused and neglected children.

In 1995, he earned the Association of Tennis Professional's Arthur Ashe Humanitarian Award for his help with disadvantaged children.

The Academy , which teaches grades K-12, opened in 2001 and had its first high school graduation two months ago.  According to Agassi, all 34 graduates are headed to college.

From an article in a recent New York Times edition, Agassi says he considers the school a laboratory of sorts, to see if his ideas for streamlining and improving education can have an effect on the "children society is quickest to write off."  It operates in the 5th largest school district in the country -- Las Vegas's Clark County -- and in a state near the bottom nationally in sending students to college.  Agassi hopes to boost graduating classes to more than 50 students each year, and if his academy succeeds, he hopes its example will become part of a national effort to improve public schools.

The tenacity and determination that were the hallmarks of his tennis career continue in his quest to make a lasting impact on others.