Alabama Youth Tennis Coach Leroy Thomas Joyner Jr. Gets 25 Federal Years for Crossing State Lines With a Minor

Leroy Thomas Joyner Jr., 51, of Columbus, Georgia, was sentenced on August 8, 2024, to 300 months in federal prison — 25 years, with no parole — after a jury in Dothan, Alabama, convicted him of transporting a minor across state lines with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity. The U.S. District Judge for the Middle District of Alabama also ordered lifetime supervised release once the prison term ends. Restitution for the victim was left for a later hearing. As of 2026, no public order has cut that term.

Joyner ran the Grassroots Tennis Association in Dale County, Alabama, a program that advertised lessons for underprivileged children and teens. The organization shut down after his 2018 arrest. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama announced the sentence the following day. That press release is the official spine of this file. Everything else in the public record — the paddle, the tournaments, the years it took to get a jury — hangs off it.

Paddle reports that opened a larger federal case

Investigators first received reports in September 2018 that Joyner had been hitting some students with a wooden paddle. Corporal punishment dressed up as coaching is how a lot of youth-sports abuse stays invisible. Parents hear “discipline.” Kids hear a threat they cannot leave. The FBI Mobile Field Office and the Dale County Sheriff’s Office followed those complaints and found a longer pattern.

Court records say Joyner took a “special interest” in a 13-year-old female student in late 2015, then used his authority as her coach — including a wooden board — to compel her compliance. Prosecutors said he took the girl to out-of-state tennis tournaments and committed sexual offenses in Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina. The abuse continued until the 2018 investigation; the victim was 15 by then. A federal jury returned the guilty verdict on January 23, 2024, on the Mann Act count that makes crossing a state line with intent the federal crime. The paddle was the door. The travel was the statute.

United States Attorney Jonathan S. Ross said the term “reflects the harm that Joyner inflicted upon his young and vulnerable victim.” He credited the victim’s decision to come forward and the work of the investigating agencies. FBI Special Agent in Charge Paul Brown called the sentencing the product of “law enforcement’s collective efforts to protect the children in our communities” and thanked the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Dale County Sheriff’s Office. The judge directed that Joyner be designated to a facility where sex-offender treatment is available.

How a charity-framed club becomes cover

Grassroots tennis programs sell a story that donors and school districts want to believe: kids who cannot afford a country-club lesson still get a racket and a responsible adult. That story is often true. In Dale County it became the reason Joyner had unsupervised hours, overnight travel, and a ready explanation for why a teenager was in his car on the way to Georgia or Louisiana. The AEGIS Alliance has watched the same structure in other youth settings. Access is the product. The mission statement is the camouflage.

Federal prosecutors did not have to prove every state-level sex offense in every hotel along the tournament map. They had to prove transportation with intent. That is why a Dothan jury, sitting in the Middle District of Alabama, could close a case that spanned three other states. The Mann Act is old law used on a modern coaching circuit. It exists because state lines are how offenders shop for weaker supervision.

There is no parole in the federal system, so a 300-month sentence means 300 months unless a later court changes it. Lifetime supervised release keeps conditions on Joyner after prison — travel limits, contact rules, treatment mandates, and the kind of monitoring that a county probation office cannot match. The Grassroots program that gave him access to children did not reopen. That closure is not a footnote. It is the only structural fix the public record shows.

Why the first complaint was about beatings

Youth-sports cases often start with the injury adults are willing to name. A bruise from a paddle can be discussed at a kitchen table. Sexual abuse cannot, especially when the adult holds the tournament schedule and the ride home. The 2018 reports about hitting were not a separate case that later “turned into” a sex case. They were the visible edge of the same control. Families who have had to prove adults in the home were lying have used their own records before; see the account of a teenager who installed cameras after no one believed her.

Youth-sports abuse prosecutions continued in other districts through 2025 and 2026. Joyner’s case remains the Middle District of Alabama’s documented example of a coach who used tournaments and a charity-framed club as cover. Related files in this archive include the Lee County, Alabama, conviction of Adrian Dabney and the older Hollywood record collected in An Open Secret. Different venues. Same question: who had the keys to the building where the child was supposed to be safe?

Columbus, Georgia, sits on the Chattahoochee, a short drive from Dale County. Joyner could advertise in one state and coach in another without anyone treating the border as a warning. That geography is why a federal courtroom in Dothan was the right venue. A county prosecutor in Alabama could charge what happened in Alabama. A U.S. attorney could charge the trips. The victim should not have had to wait from 2015 to 2024 for that distinction to matter in front of a jury. She did. The sentence is what the record shows the court did with the wait.

Background checks on volunteer coaches are only as good as the database they search. A man with no prior felony on the day he hangs a “free lessons” flyer can still be the man a child is told to obey. After Joyner’s conviction, any club that still uses a wooden paddle as “discipline” is advertising the same control method that first brought deputies to this case. The AEGIS Alliance will keep saying that in plain language. Hitting a child with a board is not a tennis drill.

The AEGIS Alliance reports these cases in crime news and U.S. news because the first complaints were about beatings, and the federal charge was about what those beatings were hiding. A 25-year term will not rebuild a childhood. It does take the coach off the court and off the interstate. Parents shopping a “free” lesson program still have the only screening tool that works before a badge gets involved: ask who travels with the kids, who sleeps in the same hotel block, and who is allowed to punish with a board.

If you or someone you know is a survivor of child sexual abuse, confidential help is available 24/7 through the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 (RAINN).