Katelynn Espinosa hugged the shiny silver chalice as if it were a treasured American Girl doll. It sat atop a square wooden base with the words, “Kings County Tennis League Davis Cup,” inscribed into the bottom. It may as well have said, “United States Open champion, 2018.”
Katelynn, 8, snatched the prize, which is almost as big as she is, from her older brother and sister one morning last month and carried it nearly the entire way from the tennis courts at the Marcy Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to her family’s home at another public-housing project, the Sumner Houses, several blocks away.