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Team Leader Jason Allen
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Role: Team Leader
Birthdate: July 12, 1977
Hometown: Palatka, Fla.
Year started with USTA wheelchair tennis: 2016 (coaching able-bodied tennis since 1990)
Jason Allen has been involved with tennis throughout his entire life, starting with his first job as an assistant tennis pro at a country club in the early1990s at the age of 15.
In October 2016, he was hired as manager for wheelchair tennis, a position based at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Fla. In his current role, he oversees wheelchair tennis across the country, managing tournaments, grass-roots initiatives, camps and coaching-development workshops, among other responsibilities.
Allen is also involved with the professional side of wheelchair tennis, as highlighted by his role as team leader with Team USA. In that administrative role, he oversees the logistics of tournaments for American players and coaches and also coordinates with the ITF, USOC and IPC. He will once again take on that responsibility at the World Team Cup.
Allen’s work also extends to on-court coaching. He helped start a weekly wheelchair tennis program at the National Campus, which has grown from one to 16 participants, and also runs several week-long all-comers camps throughout the year. Allen also helped launch the Net Generation wheelchair tennis initiative after extensive work adapting the able-bodied Net Gen curriculum for wheelchair athletes.
Allen’s unique career path also includes seven years in education, as a Spanish teacher and a principal. He left that field in 2016 to take on his current full-time role with the USTA.