Like many athletes with a competitive drive, Lisa Pugliese-LaCroix’s youth was all but consumed by her sport of choice. Growing up in Memphis, Tenn., she first picked up a tennis racquet at age 5 and didn’t put one down until after college—a period that included moving to South Florida and playing for the Saint Andrew’s high school team, then at Duke University and the University of Florida, and then on the Women’s Tennis Association pro circuit.
“All I really knew at that time was tennis,” recalls Pugliese-LaCroix from her home in Boynton Beach. “My college team won an NCAA championship my senior year, and it was somewhat expected that we were all going on the pro tour. That was something that was just engrained in me. Tennis was my identity. I didn’t have much of a social life outside my team. … But that’s how my mindset was at that time—I wanted to achieve and win, and that was what I was programmed to do.”
Soon, though, Pugliese-LaCroix’s tunnel vision widened. Precipitated in part by a case of spinal stenosis and subsequent back surgery in her early 20s, but more so by a reassessment of her priorities, she drifted away from tennis, with its inwardly focused training regimen, and toward a desire to help others. Four years after graduating from UF, she went back to school at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton to achieve a master’s in speech-language pathology, and began using her degree to specialize in children and adults on the autism spectrum.
Yet the courts would beckon again, to Pugliese-LaCroix’s surprise. Approximately 10 years into her career as a speech-language pathologist in Palm Beach County classrooms, she read a magazine article about ACEing Autism, a California-based nonprofit that used tennis training as a therapeutic model for those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
“I didn’t think I would want to get back into tennis,” she says. “But I knew I had a gift, so I thought, it would be kind of a shame if I didn’t get back into it to help others. I helped [ACEing Autism] for a few years branch into Florida, and that’s when I realized how much I loved it, and how meaningful it was to me, and that this was my purpose. Finally, it all came together: Maybe I was in tennis for this reason, on a bigger scale.”
And so, in 2017, Pugliese-LaCroix formed her own nonprofit, Love Serving Autism (LSA). Servicing some of the one in 36 American children diagnosed with ASD, LSA provides participants on the spectrum with six-week sessions of tennis and/or pickleball instruction taught year-round by certified coaches, and buttressed by certified therapists. Its host venue in Delray Beach is the Delray Swim and Tennis Center.
The sport’s benefits are myriad. “It’s repetitive, it’s social, so it’s helping them with their communication skills, their motor coordination skills, behavioral skills, regulating their sensory system,” Pugliese-LaCroix says. “When they hit the ball, I think it’s actually calming for them. I think it helps with life skills, because we always talk about character development and sportsmanship, so what they learn in class they can carry over into their school or community or home.”
LSA has proven to be as powerful as a Federer backhand, spreading to 14 states and helping more than 15,000 children and adults. For Pugliese-LaCroix, who as CEO still spends a couple of hours a month in on-court instruction, the individual transformations she’s witnessed have been striking.
“One of the moms said that her son lost 35 pounds just training for tennis, because he was a video gamer and would never leave his house after school. One of our students learned how to cook meals for himself. He learned to make his own breakfast before practice, because he would get up so early to get ready for tennis class, and mom and dad were like, ‘if you want to go to class, you have to learn to make your own breakfast.’”
For Pugliese-LaCroix, running the organization has become a family affair, with her husband Kyle holding the title of racquet sports business consultant, and their 4-year-old Goldendoodle, Duke Ferdinand LaCroix, appearing as their mascot, both on the courts and at autism awareness conferences.
Pugliese-LaCroix’s work has not gone unnoticed in the tennis world. In 2022, she received the Eve Kraft Community Service Award from the USTA, and in 2024 she earned the Professional Tennis Registry Humanitarian of the Year award. When asked about these honors, though, she mostly demurs. She prefers the focus to be on her team, and not on her as figurehead. And with no international programs yet, she believes LSA’s reach is far from complete.
“It’s always nice to be selected for an award, but on a bigger scale, we’re not there yet,” she says. “We’re making a big impact, and we’ve been doing this for seven years, but I’m just looking forward to the next 10.”
To learn more about Love Serving Autism, visit loveservingautism.org.
This story is from the Summer 2025 issue of Delray magazine.
