This Weekend our 10U players started term 1 of the 24/25 tennis season.
The club is now part of My Tennis Academy thanks to Director of Coaching Barry Clarke who has become an academy member.
This terms sessions will follow the below format -
- Skill Builder (Warm Up)
- Main Games - (1 of each) Both Back, Serve, Return, Net Games
- Competition
For the Skill Builder this week players played Tip Tap. An activity where they rallied in a small area firstly hitting only forehands, moving onto backhands and then both. It worked on their racket skills, movement, feel and touch, using abbreviated swings.
Our main games this week were -
Beat the Dice - each pair had a dice which they rolled, looking to reach the rally target which the dice landed on. If they reach the target, they gain a point. First team to 10 points win.
The point had to start with a serve, and a return (if it landed on 2-6), mimicking proper tennis points.
The Dot Game -
The server decides to start from three positions. (Easy, Normal or Challenging) The server places three throw-down lines in the three areas.
The juniors practiced their directional hitting on the serve as they had to look to serve to a particular target (targets identified by coloured dots)
Points were awarded for getting the serve directed correctly along with returning the ball back into court, with a short abbreviated take back.
We gave the juniors bonus points if serve was unreturned, or they hit a double fault. This was to help them learn to take account for their shot selection.
We swapped servers after 10 points.
The final game of the day was our competition. This weeks competition was the Jokers Tiebreak.
Each player has two joker cards.
- Players play points.
- At the end of each point, a player can use a joker card.
- If they lose the point, they could steal the point from their opponent.
- If they have won the point, they win two points.
- Players can only use two cards per set.
- Play to 10 points.
The children loved this game as they had to think carefully about when to use the two cards.
Well done to all the players! They did an amazing job. Working on their tennis game in a variety of tennis themed games which were fun, engaging, while allowing them to think and learn independently on the court.
