John Kosakowski’s life was dedicated, in part, to his four children’s pursuit of their tennis dreams.

The longtime USTA Southern California official Kosakowski’s five-year battle with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) ended on May 5 at the age of 65, and he will be remembered this Saturday by friends and family at a memorial service that will be attended by his loving wife Diane Kosakowski, oldest son Marcin, daughter Sylvia Krywacz, son Daniel and his youngest daughter Nicole Huber and their numerous children.

For more than 40 years, the Kosakowskis have been a fixture on the SoCal tennis scene and through hard work and dedication amazingly all four of the Kosakowski children earned full-ride scholarships to Division I schools. 

“The best way I can describe our upbringing is how Venus and Serena grinded it out to make it from the public parks of SoCal,” said Sylvia, an elementary school teacher living in Austin, Texas, “That’s exactly how we did it too. People say, ‘You grew up in Southern California so you must have been members of a country club.’ But we say we did it just like the Williams sisters.” 

Through Parks and Recreation Department lessons and on the public courts in Downey, Marcin (UC-Santa Barbara), Sylivia (Pepperdine), Daniel (UCLA) and Nicole (Baylor) thrived, all under the watchful eye of their caring parents John and Diane. 

Sylvia said that after living a relatively normal lifestyle for the past four years, back in August the family learned that John’s CLL was transforming to Large B Cell Lymphoma, which is a very aggressive cancer.

“It was so sad to see him go from this very strong, physical person to slowly dwindling,” Sylvia said. “But his mind was so sharp. All the way till the end, which was a good thing.”

Syliva said she has felt the love and support of the SoCal tennis community throughout John’s illness. “They’ve been reaching out and it’s been so nice to hear from so many people,” she said. “When you think of my dad, you think tennis.” 

The Kosakowski family is asking for those who would like to donate to the Lymphoma & Leukemia Society in John’s memory, they can do so by clicking on the following link in hopes of finding a cure for blood cancer: https://www.lls.org/ways-to-give