Suffolk County Student Athlete Of The Week: Cold Spring Harbor Tennis Player Sebastian Mayer

COLD SPRING HARBOR, NY — Sebastian Mayer has spent much of his life on tennis and platform tennis courts across Long Island.

As a varsity tennis player and nationally ranked junior platform tennis competitor, the Cold Spring Harbor High School junior has seen firsthand how quickly clubs and players go through equipment.

One question stuck with him: What happens to all the tennis balls after they are no longer usable?

“I’ve grown up playing tennis my entire life, and one day I had the idea, like, what happens to all these tennis balls?” Mayer told Patch.

That question led Mayer, 16, to launch Green Gold Coast Environmental Consulting, a student-founded sustainability firm aimed at reducing waste in the tennis and platform tennis industries. Since starting the company last summer, Mayer said he has collected about 16,000 tennis and platform tennis balls from local clubs, residents and community partners.

The goal, he said, is to make recycling easier for the facilities that produce large volumes of used balls while also showing that sustainability can have financial benefits.

On the Green Gold Coast website, Mayer describes the company as a sustainability firm “founded to bridge the gap between racquet sports and the circular economy.”

The company works with tennis and platform tennis facilities on Long Island to create recycling programs that turn waste into what Mayer calls “Green Gold.”

Mayer said his concern grew after learning that many used balls end up in landfills and can take hundreds of years to decompose.

“I started looking into it more, and I realized that they go to waste, and it could take almost 400 years for them to decompose,” Mayer said. “I came up with the idea to educate people on how to recycle, and help them recycle.”

Green Gold Coast offers clubs a system that includes collection bin setup, on-site logistics, regular retrieval and shipping to third-party recycling partners. Partners include RecycleBalls, Bark Balls and Ridwell.

Once collected, the balls are either repurposed or processed into crumb rubber used in new tennis courts, horse footings, landscaping mulch, dog toys and other projects.

Since 2025, Green Gold Coast says it has diverted nearly 3 tons of tennis and platform tennis balls from landfills, prevented more than 6 million unit-years of landfill residency, offset more than 6 tons of greenhouse gas emissions and created more than $7,000 in potential tax deductions.

Green Gold Coast has established recycling programs with Lloyd Harbor Beach, Cold Spring Harbor Beach Club, Cove Neck Tennis and Lloyd Neck Bath Club. Mayer said he also recycles for Huntington Indoor Tennis and Crest Hollow Country Club. He has since added Pine Hollow Country Club to the client list and is working with Maggio Environmental on a ball drive in Water Mill.

Mayer said the Maggio Environmental partnership began after he came across the company on Instagram and saw a chance to expand the effort.

“They could help me spread the word and make it easier for other people to recycle,” Mayer said.

Green Gold Coast is also running a collection drive at Cold Spring Harbor Library, where residents can drop off used tennis balls throughout the summer. Mayer said nearly 600 balls were collected during the first three weeks of the library drive, a sign that residents are willing to participate when recycling is made convenient.

The response from clubs, players and residents has been encouraging, Mayer said.

“They seem very impressed, and they all seem very happy to help,” Mayer said.

The project grew out of Mayer’s longtime connection to both tennis and environmental education. He said his mentor, Erin Oshan, was his seventh-grade science teacher. As the adviser to Cold Spring Harbor Jr./Sr. High School’s Environmental Club, Oshan was the first person Mayer turned to when he began thinking about expanding his idea.

Mayer said he also built the Green Gold Coast website himself, using artificial intelligence tools to help develop the site.

This summer, Mayer is also working as a junior tennis teaching pro at Piping Rock Club, which already has an established recycling program.

“My goals are to hopefully expand to more country clubs,” Mayer said. “Spread the word about recycling, educate people about recycling, and make it more accessible for people to recycle.”

Although Mayer is still in high school, he said Green Gold Coast has already shaped the way he thinks about his future. He is interested in studying environmental science in college, but he is also drawn to the business side of sustainability.

“I’m very interested in studying environmental science in college, and my goal specifically is to find the economic side to that,” Mayer said.

The idea started with used tennis balls, but Mayer said Green Gold Coast has become something larger.

Mayer said the message to other tennis players is that used balls do not have to be treated as trash.

“This is something every tennis player should do,” Mayer said. “It’s not very hard to do, and everything is recyclable.”

This summer, Patch is looking back at the student-athletes who defined the 2025-26 sports seasons across Suffolk County. The series highlights standout athletes, team leaders and competitors whose achievements extended beyond the scoreboard. Know a Suffolk County student-athlete who should be featured in a future Student Athlete of the Week profile? Coaches, athletic directors, school district officials and families can send nominations, standout accomplishments and photos to kdaniel@patch.com for consideration.