My name is Este Liu. I am an incoming six grader at West Portal Luthran School in San Francisco, California. I started playing tennis when I was five years old. Playing tennis makes me happy and helped me to get strong, physically and mentally. I also learned many life skills through playing the game. I am so lucky that my mom works for an airline, so I was able to travel to many places in Asia, Australia, Europe and South America to see the world, play tennis and make friends.

In 2014, when I was 8 years old, we visited Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. During that trip, we took a tour of the favela (slum) in the city. It was my very first time being in a neighborhood like that, and I was shocked by the hard living conditions of the people and kids there. But one thing I noticed is that kids everywhere in Brasil plays soccer, even in the favelas. When a bunch of kids are kicking and chasing a soccer ball, they all have big smiles on their faces as if the living conditions in the slum does not bother them at all. That reminded me of being on a tennis court, I feel like nothing else matters at the moment, striking a ball across the net simply makes me happy. At that moment, I thought maybe I could give my old tennis racquets that I outgrown to some other kids who can not afford to get one, maybe they will grow to love the game that I love, and be happy too.

Throughout the years that I've been playing tennis and training at different places and camps, I've gone through so many tennis balls. I remember hearing my dad's complain that there is no way to recycle used tennis balls where we live, tennis balls in the landfill do not help to ease the global warming that our generation faces. After I learned how to do research on the internet, I found a company who grinds down used tennis balls and turns them into state of the art tennis courts. What a great idea I thought, I can help to collect all the used tennis balls and help to reduce our waste and turn them into useful materials.

With the help of my parents, we set up this web site and Play It On. We collect used tennis racquets, recondition and re-string them, and give them to the next generation kids who otherwise could not afford to get one. We collect used tennis balls and send to our partner - reBounce to be recycled into tennis court building materials.

Thank you again for visiting us. Please lend a helping hand, together, we can encourage more kids to play the game of tennis, one racquet at a time; together we can make the earth a cleaner home, one tennis ball at a time. Let's Play It On.
Summer, 2017
San Francisco, California