In Newham’s public parks, Zeya Lei is teaching more than forehands. He’s showing what happens when you break tennis wide open — and make it belong to everyone.

On a summer afternoon in Newham, the pop of tennis balls echoes off newly painted courts. Here, Zeya Lei is quietly rewriting the rules of a sport that long told him he didn’t belong.

At 27, he cuts an unassuming figure: soft-spoken and self-deprecating, but his presence here is no accident.

"Tennis was an important part of my growing up,” he says. “But it was never really made for me. And that feeling — of not quite belonging — is what drives me now."

A game stacked against him

Born in Britain to a Burmese father and British mother, Zeya grew up in Southend-on-Sea, introduced to tennis at eight by his cousin. By his teens, he was competing at a decent level — and learning the sport’s unspoken hierarchy the hard way.

“I’d get accused of cheating and nobody believed me when I defended myself,” he recalls. “When I showed emotion on court, I was ‘the angry brown kid.’ But when the white kids got fiery, it was just called passion.”

By 15, he quit. He didn’t yet know that undiagnosed ADHD and autism were part of what made competing so hard. 

“I just thought I wasn’t good enough,” he says.

Years later, after a stint lifeguarding and teaching swimming, he returned to tennis, this time determined to give his players what he never had: a place where they truly belonged.

This spring, Zeya joined the National Tennis Association as a full-time coach at Newham Parks Tennis. At his interview, he was upfront about his ADHD, autism, and mental health struggles— and asked outright: would they hold it against him?

The answer was no.

And the courts in Newham tell him so. The courts themselves are clean, open, well-maintained— a signal that this is a space people deserve to be in. 

“When people step onto a nice court, they already feel like they belong,” Zeya says. But he knows that belonging takes more than good facilities.

“Tennis is an elitist sport,” he says simply. “It’s mainly for white people with money. That hasn’t really changed much.”

“In parks, you get everyone: all kinds of cultures, different bodies, different abilities. At clubs, you feel like you have to behave a certain way. But here? You can just be yourself.”

That, to him, is the point of inclusivity: not just lowering costs, but breaking the cultural barriers that keep so many out.

If you feel good, you play good

“I want everyone to feel not just like they belong in tennis,” he says, “that they’re accepted for who they are, whether that’s how they dress, how they move, or who they are off the court.”

Zeya notices what others miss— a shy girl tugging at her sleeves, a boy whose mother quietly mentions his autism diagnosis, a player in bright trainers looking for approval. 

“If you feel good, you play good,” he likes to say, making a point to compliment his students’ outfits or greet Chinese players in Mandarin.

His clients notice too. A mother recently told him, after her three-year-old’s first session, “Now that I’ve seen you with her, I trust this whole programme.” 

Another student, who’d tried six coaches in two months, told him simply: “You’re my favourite.”

Even when his own self-doubt creeps in — “coaching is hard work, mentally and physically,” he says — moments like those keep him coming back.

“That’s what makes it worth it,” he says.

Changing the game

Zeya is clear-eyed about the bigger picture. The NTA’s public park model lowers the financial barriers by offering affordable sessions in place of pricey clubs, but it also chips away at something deeper: the idea that tennis is for someone else.

“I want to create superstars who look like us,” Zeya says. “And then they’ll inspire the next generation. That’s how you change the game.”

He talks a lot about representation, how kids need to see players who look like them, who play with swagger, who don’t apologise for being different. 

He brings up Gaël Monfils and Emma Raducanu. He lights up when talking about Lewis Hamilton, who fought his way into another elitist, white-dominated sport and made space for himself and others.

“You don’t change tennis by pretending it’s already inclusive,” he says. 

“You change it by showing up and making it so.”

Here in East London, a young man stands tossing tennis balls to kids who might grow up to be stars and adults feeling like they deserve to take up space.

Either way, it matters. And in Newham parks, you can already feel that change.

Because in Zeya’s corner of the world, the one NTA has been building, tennis finally feels a little more like it should belong to everyone.

Here on the park courts of Newham, that feels like its own kind of win.