Thursday, October 1, 2026
At age 16, Friends Academy student Olivia Lichota has already discovered how a passion for tennis can become a way to give back to her community.
Lichota, an Old Brookville resident, an incoming junior at Friends Academy, in Locust Valley, and a member of the school’s tennis team, founded a nonprofit tennis clinic this summer for children involved with the Boys & Girls Club in Glen Cove. The program brings about a dozen children, mostly ages 10 to 12, to the Robbie Wagner Tournament Training Center, in Glen Cove, for weekly sessions that introduce them to the sport.
The clinic grew out of Lichota’s participation in Friends’ Entrepreneurship and Social Innovators programs, in which students are encouraged to work with entrepreneurial businesses and identify problems in their communities and develop solutions.
“I think about how Quakerism plays a role with integrity and simplicity, which are some of the Quakers’ SPICES,” she said, referring to the anagram for simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship (or sustainability), the core values of the denomination, “and it kind of helps just to know that that’s always there and to think about that in the back of my mind.”
Lichota began developing the idea this winter, after taking part in the school’s innovators program. What initially seemed like a small project eventually became a larger effort, including a fundraising campaign that brought in $15,000 in three weeks. Donations have since increased the total to nearly $20,000, she said.
“I was thinking at first it would be this little thing,” Lichota recalled, “and people would come to my school and use their tennis courts and stuff like that, but then it turned into something way bigger.”
Lichota has played at the training center for years, and worked with coaches there to set up the weekly program, securing three coaches and three courts. The children begin with stretching and muscle-loosening exercises before moving into tennis drills and games. Lichota plays alongside them, helping them become comfortable with the sport.
“(The clinic is) just there for them to have fun and just learn the basics of tennis,” she said, “because some of them never even picked up a racket before.”
Lichota has played tennis since she was 3, and attended tennis programs at IMG Academy in Florida. The sport has also helped her develop confidence, she said. At one point, she considered quitting because of the anxiety she felt before she competed, but she ultimately continued playing.
Now, she said, watching the children play has been one of the most rewarding parts of the project.
“Seeing them laughing and all talking and playing together, even playing against each other, is just so fun to watch,” she said. “People aren’t, like, stressed or scared or anything like that, because everyone’s super comfortable, and that just makes me so happy to watch and see that everyone’s having fun and enjoying it.”
Molly Gia Foresta, a world history and entrepreneurship teacher at Friends Academy, taught Lichota in the school’s entrepreneurship courses. She said that Lichota stood out because of her willingness to develop ideas and collaborate with other students.
“She’s an entrepreneur. That’s who she is,” Foresta said. “She’s a natural in that regard; she has ideas and she makes them happen.”
The entrepreneurship program emphasizes social entrepreneurship, with students working with nonprofit organizations and businesses to address real-world challenges. Students meet with entrepreneurs, learn about their organizations and then develop potential solutions through research, brainstorming and design thinking.
Lichota’s tennis clinic, Foresta said, is a natural extension of that approach. Lichota completed both levels of the entrepreneurship program, and in the second course she developed an app called Wake Up Together, which was designed to connect users with accountability partners who could help them get out of bed in the morning.
“There’s a variety of different organizations that we partner with, but it’s great because the challenges are real,” Foresta said. “They’re complex, they’re urgent and they demand concrete deliverables.”
In the classes, Lichota learned about developing ideas, problem-solving, marketing and fundraising, skills she later applied to her tennis initiative.
Daniel Mendel, Friends’ dean of innovation and chair of the English department, said the entrepreneurship program is part of a broader collection of innovative courses designed to put students in real-world situations, working with businesses, nonprofits and professionals and developing research-based solutions to actual problems.
“This is a student who really took initiative,” Mendel said of Lichota. “It speaks to the value of our academic program that they were inspired by one of our particular courses, and one of our particular teachers, Molly, is excellent at inspiring students to think outside of the box, to really care about more than school.”
Friends’ Quaker mission, Mendel said, encourages students to look beyond the classroom and apply what they learn in ways that benefit others. Lichota said that her own interest in community service also helped inspire her tennis initiative. She volunteers with AHRC and takes part in Watch, a Friends committee focused on helping the community.
She said she hoped the tennis program would ultimately give the children more than an introduction to the sport. For now, she said, she is focused on keeping the clinic going and watching them develop their skills.
