Editorial: Game, set, match

Tuesday, June 27, 2006 | 8:37 a.m.

Andre Agassi may be ready to retire his tennis racket, but he is still very much in the game when it comes to being a champion for the Las Vegas Valley's children.

With tears in his eyes, Agassi announced Saturday that this week will represent his last tournament at Wimbledon and that this summer's U.S. Open is to be his last tournament ever. Agassi is retiring at 36, after earning $30 million in prize money and earning the title of one of the greatest tennis players of all time.

"Champion" wasn't always the term applied to this dynamic Las Vegas native. He arrived on the professional tennis scene in 1986 as a teenager with long hair, garish court attire and a brash attitude that violated tennis etiquette's gray strictures. Twenty years, dozens of victories, a successful marriage and two children later, Agassi has become a role model even for those who have never handled a racket.

The name this world champion made for himself on the tennis court just may pale in comparison to the one he has earned in his hometown as founder of the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy and the foundation that supports it. In opening the academy, Agassi has created an award-winning charter school that has given hundreds of Las Vegas Valley children the chance to become winners for life.

The Agassi school is located in West Las Vegas - one of the valley's poorest neighborhoods - and offers a tuition-free, college prep-school curriculum and atmosphere to children who otherwise would have no opportunity for such an education.

As Agassi looks back on a career that has meant so much to the world of tennis, he can look forward to continuing his work for children in a community that thinks the world of him.